Supporting positive development in early adolescence: A school-based intervention in Turkey

ABSTRACT

We present a youth development intervention program and its evaluation. Deriving from the theories of agentic self and positive youth development, we adopted a holistic perspective that focused on social agency with growth mindset and self-efficacy conceptualized as its motivators. The intervention consisted of 14 weekly sessions with 508 sixth graders in four public schools in Turkey (M_age = 11.8, 49% female). A comparable group with 417 sixth graders in five public schools served as the control group (M_age = 11.7, 47% female). All students came from families of low to middle socioeconomic status. The evaluation had an experimental design with pretest, posttest (4 months after pretest), and follow-up (11 months after posttest) assessments. Findings indicated beneficial effects of the intervention on mindset, self-efficacy, and some indicators of social agency, some of which were sustained through the follow-up. In concordance with previous research on early adolescents, a general decline in positive adaptation was observed in the control group between pre- and posttests.

Notes

¹A term that refers to the non-Western world, including the majority of the world’s population.

²The acronym stands for Positive Adolescent Development in Turkish. PERGEL is also the word for a compass (the drawing tool). It reflects the stability of one leg and the freedom of the second to expand, symbolizing the potential for growth of the adolescent.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) [Grant number 111K392].