What does Adolescence mean?
Adolescence is a period that contains significant changes in a person’s life at the level of biological, psychological, and emotional sides transmitting him/her to the beginning of a new phase. It contains different and stressed waves that go between childhood and adulthood that the person experiences through this duration. Linguistically speaking, adolescence originally comes from the Latin word “adolescere” which means to grow up. Considerable debate has been, and still, occurred to determine adolescence start and end age. According to G Stanley from the early 20th century, it happens between the age of 14 to 20. However, the World Health Organization considers the adolescence period of development from 10 to 20 years of age. Worthy of mentioning, it has been officially endorsed by the United Nations between 10 to 19 years.
The More Rightful Conceptualization Understood about Life Phases and its Implications, The Better Support, and Protection Provided to Teenagers.
Adolescence Culture
Autonomy
Adolescents, at this particular time, turn into having a more extensive space of autonomy and separation even from their parents. Some hormonal changes that affiliated with puberty play an essential role and lead to a new attitude. Teenagers tend to get rid of their affiliation to the family and obtain their independence and self-authority.
Negative Vibes
Adolescents, within the biological restructure, fight with many ongoing difficulties such as finding their own identity, determining self-perspective, overcoming loneliness, negativity, and feeling of loss. They keep asking many questions to figure out who are they. What are their purposes in life?
Acceptance and Identity
Adolescence is a storm of multifaceted changes and conflicts. Being unique and unlike any other person in thinking, actions, and looking styles are the main characteristics that could describe this duration. Adolescents are more likely to be seen as one group. Group speaks the same language, uses exact expressions and idioms, pursues the same fashion lines, and usually runs after each other’s acceptance and applause. Their peers more typically impact them.
Adolescents & the Cognitive Changes that can be a double-edged sword
PROS
*Recognizing the social and emotional knowledge process is not a complicated process for adolescents.
* Their desire to discover the world and break its traditional rules include outstanding potentials they might look up to.
*They always give it a try to approach new experiences and adventures and overcoming challenges using their cognitive abilities.
CONS
*Adolescents automatically follow some risky and impulsive acts without considering the consequences.
*Outstanding numbers of research illustrate that cognitive ability is associated with less action-control, and vulnerability of impulsive behavior, and the capability of taking risky decisions during adolescence
*There is a clear ambivalence of the use of cognitive changes and progress during adolescence between behave rationally or carelessly move.
Human brain is really flexible and able to adapt through both Pruning and Myelination processes
Pruning & Myelination: Pruning is briefly declining the unused information. Although, myelination is accelerating the transmission speed of the data between the nerve cells seeking quicker communications acquiring to the high quality of thinking.
Effective Learning Techniques for adolescents
*Adolescent brain can absorb massive amounts of information in their working memory. Therefore, having them deal with more extensive knowledge within engaging activities using chunking, storytelling, mnemonics, and rhyme methods would have a significant impact.
*Since adolescents consider themselves one similar group and their brains are social, teaching them in groups would be the best way to follow. Rightfully connect them and then interconnect them to teachers & parents is a practical method. In other words, the strategy of “Think, Pair, Share” would positively decrease the gap.
*Excessive amounts of mixed emotions can help them learn better. Emotions bring attention, and attention leads to learning.
*Adolescents are susceptible; therefore, teachers should be careful dealing with them. They should pay great attention to differentiate between humor and sarcasm in case they want to make some funny atmosphere in class.
*Teachers should make sure that students follow. Thus, questions such as “What do I need to clarify?” or “What questions might you have?” because they might feel shy to ask.
*Use of the Socratic Teaching method, asking the audience questions, to allow feedback and verification of understanding. For example, use “I just used the word “asymmetry” — can anyone tell me what that means?” This is very important to encourage interaction.
*Adolescents suffer from depression. Therefore, teachers should show respect and fairness.
*Teachers should discover the diverse learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) and set the learning procedures accordingly.
*support adolescents survive the turbulent phase they pass through is structured extracurricular activities (SEA). In an effort to preserve from anti-social behaviors, delinquency, dropping out from school, and self-destructive attempts like committing suicide.
*Extracurricular activities help them build personal skills, socialize with diverse people, develop a sense of belonging to their community, acquire better grades; and since they are voluntary, they produce a kind of enjoyment which consequently boosts their academic level (Gilman, Meyers, & Perez, 2004). Furthermore, such activities, besides helping them acquire high GPAs, prepare them for university and for life at large.
WATCH This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HGd0knIR1Q
Adolescence Resilience and Spirituality
There are school-based programs that nurture the development of character by instilling in
students compassion and focus more on the spiritual side of their character.
- Several studies suggest that spirituality helps adolescents find answers to their questions about the meaning of life, enhance their abilities to cope with their surroundings, and boost their learning activities.
- Spirituality protects adolescents from harmful behaviors and cultivate positive ones.
- Spirituality originates within adolescents an optimistic outlook and
supports them in time of adversities.
Teens Can – Resilient teens and positive mental health WATCH———>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHHFGo161Os
Adolescents & the Family Support System
* Parent’s roles in supporting the adolescents are very important.
* The parental closeness and friendship to their adolescents is a necessity. It could be obtained through building understanding and open relationship with them.
*Supportive parents can help adolescents develop a good self-concept, high level of self-esteem and self-confidence through having an accepting & democratic relationship between them. They should be careful of their children’s behaviors at the adolescence stage and what they say because it reveals a lot about their emotional and mental well-being.
Parents have role to teach their adolescents proper values. Peer influence is strong on the adolescent’s behaviors and values and the adolescent seeks acceptance from the peers. However, and fortunately for parents, “Adolescents are quicker to adopt peer behaviors than peer values. Parents are likely to have a stronger effect than peers on long-term issues and goals, which are based on values’’ (Thornburg, 1982, p239). Thus, the parents have a very important role: to teach their adolescent son/ daughter proper values and to be close to them lest there becomes a distant gap between parent and the adolescent son/ daughter when he/she associates with new peers. They must know that association with peers is normal; however, they should be close to their children and aware of their sons/daughters’ peers’ values & behaviors. They also need to reinforce good behaviors adolescents do because if they do not, adolescents will look for reinforcement from their peers. They should also know that adolescents are seeking self-identity and “the adolescent must develop a realistic self-concept and a realistic perception of how others view them.”(Thornburg,1982,p538). Parents must therefore be understanding and supporting to their children in order that they have this realistic and positive understanding of themselves.
* Connection is Foundational, Friendship and Reinforcement, and Subconscious Agendas. WATCH THIS————>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHKKLkKtWds
About the team:
Odette Assad Barsoum
Education is not about life, it’s life.
Marwa Allam
Nada Hassan Awadallah
“The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed” Hellen Keller.
Adolescents Brain Development and Maturation 