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 (Mage = 11.8, 49% female). A comparable group with 417 sixth graders in five public schools served as the control group (Mage = 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.