School as a Context of Early Adolescents' Academic and Social-Emotional Development: A Summary of Research Findings

Successful youth development during adolescence is an intergenerational process, one in which youth are responsible for being open to and taking advantage of new experiences, and adults are responsible for providing youth with nourishing, growth-enhancing opportunities. In this article, we examine how adolescents perceive the nature of the opportunities they are provided by teachers and staff in middle school, and how such opportunities are related to changes in their academic and social-emotional functioning over time. Our findings indicate that specific instructional, interpersonal, and organizational dimensions of middle school life, as perceived by adolescents themselves, are associated in important ways with the quality and character of their education- and non-education-related development during the years of early adolescence.