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Resilience and Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Model

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Handbook of Resilience in Children

Abstract

Adolescents are not resilient. Resilience is also not a functional feature of the ecology of adolescent development (e.g., as may be represented by the concept of “protective factors”). Rather, resilience is a concept denoting that the relationship between an adolescent and his or her ecology has adaptive significance. That is, the relationship involves a fit between characteristics of an individual youth and features of his or her ecology that reflects either adjustment (change) in the face of altered or new environmental threats, challenges, or “processes,” or constancy or maintenance of appropriate or healthy functioning in the face of environmental variations in the resources needed for appropriate or healthy functioning. As such, the individual–context relationship summarized by the term “resilience” reflects individual well-being at a given point in time, and thriving across the adolescent period, in the face of features within the ecological context that challenge adaptation. In turn, this relationship also implies that, for the ecology or context, there are actions that could maintain or further the quality of its structure (e.g., the family, schools, or community programs for youth development) or its function in the service of supporting healthy adolescent behavior and development (e.g., parenting that reflects warmth and appropriate monitoring; low student–teacher ratios involving engaged students and high quality institutions; and access to competent, caring, and committed mentors in out-of-school-time [OST] youth development programs, respectively).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clearly, the translation of this theoretical probability distribution into empirical reality will vary in relation to individuals across the course of adolescence, as well as in relation to group differences and diverse contexts. In short, there is intraindividual variability, and between-group differences in intraindividual changes in the empirical probability distribution pertinent to resilience.

  2. 2.

    Individual actions that are not supportive of the institutions and agents of the ecology (that are acting to support the individual) are ultimately not reflective of resilience and, as well, are not sustainable (Lerner, 2004).

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Acknowledgments

The preparation of this chapter was supported in part by grants from the National 4-H Council, the Thrive Foundation for Youth, and the John Templeton Foundation.

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  1. Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Richard M. Lerner, Jennifer P. Agans, Miriam R. Arbeit, Paul A. Chase, Michelle B. Weiner, Kristina L. Schmid & Amy Eva Alberts Warren

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    Sam Goldstein

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    Robert B. Brooks

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Lerner, R.M. et al. (2013). Resilience and Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Model. In: Goldstein, S., Brooks, R. (eds) Handbook of Resilience in Children. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4_17

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