The End of the Beginning

Abstract

This article discusses the conceptual and substantive status of the positive youth development (PYD) perspective, a strengths-based approach to child and adolescent development that is associated with relational developmental systems metatheory. Developmental science seeks to describe, explain, and optimize within-the-person change and between-people differences in intraindividual change across the life span. The alternative meaning of PYD pertains to a strengths-based conception of young people, one that emphasizes that the fundamental strength of the period is constituted by the potential for systematic change throughout the adolescent period, a potential that both derives from and contributes to mutually beneficial relations between the individual and his or her complex and changing context. Contemporary developmental science is characterized by the centrality of theories or models derived from relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory. RDS metatheory is derived from a process-relational paradigm, wherein the organism is seen as inherently active, self-creating, self-organizing, self-regulating, nonlinear/complex, and adaptive.