positiveyouthdevelopment Positive Youth Development (PYD) focuses on protective factors or...
positive youth development
- Sectors: A! Active Citizenship
Positive Youth Development (PYD) focuses on protective factors or the assets of youth and adolescents (Scales et al. 2005; Schwartz et al. 2007; Lerner et al. 2005; Theokas et al. 2005). PYD embraces the concept of youth as having the capacity to thrive, defined as “fulfilling one’s potential and contributing positively to one’s community” (Edberg 2008). In short, PYD emphasizes the potential of each juvenile. This approach represents a fundamental shift away from earlier conceptualizations of youth as broken, dangerous, and “problems to be managed,” as well as a shift away from a “deficit model” that understood positive development as the absence of negative or risk behaviours (such as drug use, truancy, delinquency) [Lerner 2005; Lerner et al. 2013]. Many models of intervention or prevention prior to the early 1990s focused almost exclusively on reducing risk exposure (Lerner 2005).
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