Teachers make a difference. As someone who grew up in one of the po- est and rural areas of a poor state and ended up attending elite graduate and professional schools, I have much to credit my public school teachers. My teachers sure struggled much to teach an amazingly wide variety of students from different backgrounds, abilities, and hopes. Given that re- ity, which undoubtedly repeats itself across the United States and globe, one would think that I should be quite hesitant to criticize a system that produces countless grateful students and productive citizens. I agree. The pages that follow surely can be perceived as yet another attack on already much maligned schools that do produce impressive outcomes despite their limited resources, increased obligations, and the sustained barrage of attacks from competing interest groups. Some may even view the text as an affront to the inalienable rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit. Others surely could understand the analysis as another assault on our decentralized legal and school systems that should retain the right to balance the needs of communities, parents, schools, and students. I clearly did not intend, and do not see the ultimate result, as yet another diatribe on the manner teachers, parents and communities treat students.

Why is it that so many children in the US and England underperform academically in comparison with people in many other industrialized countries? Despite the ongoing search for effective teaching approaches, it would appear that for many children, motivation is the central issue. Arguing that current perspectives on motivation are too narrow, this book draws upon a major five year international study that has examined the impact of factors at the level of the child, the school, the family and wider society. In providing recommendations for policy and practice, this text sets a challenge to those who seek simplistic solutions to problems of student apathy and disaffection.

Arguing that metaphor and the figurative are central to constructions and narrations of adolescence in America, this book uses a wide array of fictional and critical work, including texts by important authors such as Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides, to provide original and provocative new readings of adolescence.

The goal of this book is to provide teachers with the theoretical and practical information needed to meet the daily challenge of individualizing instruction for gifted and talented students with different learning styles in regular classrooms. These students spend most of their time in regular courses. Teachers and counselors often are urged to provide for the unique needs of each of these learners without being shown how such adolescents differ from each offer in their learning style traits. This is the first book devoted entirely to the topic, and it is based on a two-year study in many different nations.

Are teenagers in Tokyo more or less mature than teens in Brooklyn? What do Chinese teens do for weekend recreation? What do they value and care about? This volume shows that the lives of teens in prosperous and westernized Asian countries have much in common with those of American teens. Obtaining a good education is paramount, and Asian interests and tastes--in pop culture and sports, for example--are in sync with their American counterparts. In poorer and politically restricted Asian nations, teen life and opportunities are more restricted, however. Greater focus and energy is given to helping the family survive. Yet it is the ancient cultural and religious traditions in Asian life that constitute the fundamental difference between American and Asian teens. This book is an insightful and sweeping introduction to the Asian teen experience--from a typical day to participation in religious ceremonies--in 15 countries.

Much concern has been expressed about the scandal of physical and sexual abuse by care workers of children living in residential homes but this is the first detailed study of the major problem of violence between children. Based on extensive interviews with young people as well as staff, children's own perspectives and experiences of violence are highlighted. There is important new information about different levels of violence between homes, the significance of gender and group hierarchies, and strategies to tackle violence. MARKET 1: Postgraduates and Researchers in Sociology, Social Theory, Social Work, Childhood Studies and the Sociology of Children MARKET 2: Practitioners and social workers in local government, involved in the management of care homes, and residential child care

Teens in Latin America and the Caribbean generally face a difficult path to adulthood. Poverty and unemployment, violence, political instability, and emigration are frequently the norm in their native countries. Those from poorer families must often work as well as attend school, and opportunities for higher education and good jobs are limited. Wealthier teens, on the other hand, are sheltered from harshness and enjoy private schools, vacations abroad, and access to American consumer products. Yet family is important no matter what the class, and most of these teens share a love of parties, music, and current fashions. Latin America and the Caribbean are important regions to the United States, since large numbers of Americans can trace their roots there. Teen Life in Latin America and the Caribbean allows U.S. teens to understand the unique challenges and opportunities of teens in 15 Latin American or Caribbean countries. Photos complement the text.

This volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth showcases timely and important work of active, early-career sociologists helping to define the direction of the sub-field. Their work shares basic premises and concerns: Children and youth are active agents in their own "socialization," produce meaning and action collaboratively with peers, and struggle for agency in various social contexts. These themes shape essentially all of the contributions.

The volume is organized in two parts. Following the Introduction, six chapters make up Part One, "Empirical Studies." Two quantitative analyses lead off: first an examination of residential mobility, peer networks and life-course transitions; second, a look at adolescents' participation in a particular social movement. Two ethnographic studies follow - here the foci are "Zero Tolerance" school discipline policies, and female athletes' construction of femininity. A comparative content analysis of teen magazine advice columns, and a qualitative study of construction of "adoptive family" identities, round out Part One.

Three chapters constitute Part Two, "Innovations in Theory and Research Methods." The first offers an analysis of two films that explore children's struggle for agency and control. The next chapter develops a typology of children's participation in social movements, employing fascinating first-person narrative accounts. The final chapter demonstrates the unique ability of group interviews to capture processes through which adolescents accomplish group talk, develop shared perspectives, and construct gender identities.

Urban teens of color are often portrayed as welfare mothers, drop outs, drug addicts, and both victims and perpetrators of the many kinds of violence which can characterize life in urban areas. Although urban youth often live in contexts which include poverty, unemployment, and discrimination, they also live with the everydayness of school, friends, sex, television, music, and other elements of teenage lives. Inner City Kids explores how a group of African American, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Haitian adolescents make meaning of and respond to living in an inner-city community.

The book focuses on areas of particular concern to the youth, such as violence, educational opportunities, and a decaying and demoralizing urban environment characterized by trash, pollution, and abandoned houses. McIntyre's work with these teens draws upon participatory action research, which seeks to codevelop programs "with" study participants rather than "for" them.

An outstandingly courageous, honest and original approach to teenage acting-out. This book might save your family's sanity. -Louise Bates Ames, Gesell Institute of Human Development

Youth, Religion, and Identity in a Globalizing Context: International Perspectives investigates the ways that young people navigate the intersections of religion and identity. As part of the Youth in a Globalizing World series, this book provides a broad discussion on the various social, cultural, and political forces affecting youth and their identities from an international comparative perspective. Contributors to this volume situate the experiences of young people in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Australia within a globalized context. This volume explores the different experiences of youth, the impact of community and processes of recognition, and the reality of ambivalence as agency. Youth, Religion, and Identity in a Globalizing Context: International Perspectives is now available in paperback for individual customers.

This book innovatively re-envisions the possibilities of sexuality education. Utilizing student critiques of programs it reconfigures key debates in sexuality education including: Should pleasure be part of the curriculum? Who makes the best educators? Do students prefer single or mixed gender classes?

During Hitler's reign, the Nazis deliberately developed and exploited a youthful image and used youth to define their political and social hierarchies. After the war, with Hitler gone but still requiring cultural exorcism, many intellectuals, authors, and filmmakers turned to these images of youth to navigate and negotiate the most difficult questions of Germany's recent, nefarious past. Focusing on youth, education, and crime allowed postwar Germans to claim one last realm of sovereignty against the Allies' own emphatic project of reeducation. Youth, reeducation, and reconstruction became important sites for the occupied to confront not only the recent past, but to negotiate the present occupation and, ultimately, direct the future of the German nation."Disciplining Germany" analyzes a variety of media, including literature, news media, intellectual history, and films, in order to argue that youth and education played a central role in Germany's coming to terms with the Nazi past. Although there has been a recently renewed interest in Germany's coming to terms with the past, this attention has largely ignored the role of youth and reeducation. This lacuna is particularly perplexing given that the Allies' reeducation project became, in many ways, a cipher for the occupational project as a whole."Disciplining Germany" opens up the discussion and points toward more general conclusions not only about youth and education as sites for wider socio-political and cultural debates but also about the complexities of occupation and the intertwining of different national cultures. In this investigation, the study attends to both 'high' and 'low' cultural text - to specialized versus popular texts - to examine how youth was mobilized across the generic spectrum.With these interdisciplinary approaches and timely interventions, "Disciplining Germany" will find a diverse readership, including upper-division and graduate courses in German studies and German history as well as those general readers interested in Nazi Germany, cultural history, film and literary studies, youth culture, American studies, and post-conflict and occupational situations.

This is the first annotated guide to recent young adult literature that is organized into specific problem areas: alienation and identity, disabilities, homosexuality, divorced and single parents, adopted and foster families, abuse, eating disorders (anorexia nervosa and bulimia), alcohol and drugs, poverty, dropouts and delinquency, teenage pregnancy, AIDS, death and dying, and stress and suicide. More than 900 recommended books published through 1993 have been annotated. Reading levels of recommended books are grades 5-8 and interest level is through grade 12.

This work addresses bibliotherapy, but is not based on it. Instead, it is built on the premise that literacy is the key to growth and understanding. Each chapter deals with a specific adolescent problem area and begins with general comments about the problem, startling information and current statistics about its gravity and pervasiveness, warning signs to look for, and suggestions of what to do and where to go for help. Each entry contains complete bibliographic information. The format and readable annotations will make it easy for young adults, parents, librarians, teachers, clergy, psychologists, counselors, social workers, and health professionals to find appropriate fiction and nonfiction books and articles on the serious problems that adolescents face today.

The use of social media has gained a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. However, general concerns exist among the public, community, schools, and administration that online social communication may pose more threats than benefits to adolescents. Adolescent Online Social Communication and Behavior: Relationship Formation on the Internet identifies the role and function of shared contact behavior of youth on the Web. With expert international contributions, this publication provides a deep understanding on various issues of adolescent Internet use with an emphasis on diverse aspects of social and cognitive development, communication characteristics, and modes of communication.

Youth and Family Services (YFS) are part of residential and group homes, schools, social service organizations, hospitals, and family court systems. YFS include prevention, education, positive youth development, foster care, child welfare, and treatment. As YFS has evolved advances in research have brought forth a host of promising new ideas that both complement and expand on the original underpinnings of strengths-based practice. Thriving on the Front Lines represents an articulation of these advancements. Thriving on the Front Lines explores the use of strengths-based practices with those who are "in the trenches," Youth Care Worker (YCWs). Commonly referred to as resident counselors, youth counselors, psychiatric technicians (psych techs), caseworkers, case managers, and house parents or managers, YCWs are on the "front lines," often providing services 24 hours a day. Thriving on the Front Lines is an up-to-date treatise on the pivotal role of YCWs and those who work day in and day out with youth to improve their well-being, relationships, and overall quality of life. Unique aspects of the strengths-based framework provided in Thriving on the Front Lines include: Strengths-based principles informed by five decades of research; Discussion of the importance of using real-time feedback to improve service outcomes and "how to" implement an outcome-orientation; Exploration of Positive Youth Development; Two chapters devoted entirely to strengths-based interventions; An in-depth discussion of how to improve effectiveness through deliberate practice; and, How to develop a strengths-based organizational climate.

aFast Cars, Cool Rides is empirically rich, full of arresting observations and revealing verbatim quotes.a
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Best shines a fluorescent street light on young people in high octane motion, making meaning and community through their cars. . . . Best's subjects articulate an intricate interplay of class, race, gender, and identity formation; she's given a great American institution its props."
--Donna Gaines, author of "Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids"

"Best's insights and observations should help youth workers and other adults understand this often powerful symbol."
--"Youth Today"

"How pleasantly jarring to be invited to enter Santa Clara Street, to feel the heat of the summer, to smell the alcohol on the breaths of the youth, to hear the bottles breaking on the sidewalk and to, most importantly, be treated to a fine analysis of the experiences of some of these cruisers."
--Daniel Thomas Cook, author of "The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer"

"Has the potential to expand our knowledge about young people's great social power, their contributions to changing culture, and their influence in marketplace decision-making. . . . A compelling and thought-provoking read."
--Debra Van Ausdale, author of "The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism"

aIn Fast Cars, Cool Rides, Amy Best takes the inside lane on how and why young people use their cars as a means of cultural expression. Whether the school parking lot, auto-shop class, or the San Jose cruising scene, and whether the goal is personal freedom, racial solidarity, masculine power, or femininerebelliousness, the car is the vehicle for the job, affording youth the symbolic and material means to solidify their identities within the context of global consumer culture. An intelligent, well-written book on kids and their cars; buckle up and take this ride."
--Laura Grindstaff, author of "The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows"

"Amy Best once again proves herself a most astute observer of youth cultures. This exciting study of diverse American car cultures brims with insight about identity formation, commodification, and the making of diverse modern selves."
--Janice M. Irvine, author of "Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States"

"Social observers from Tom Wolfe to George Lucas have seen Californians' car-cruising as emblematic of our larger society and social structure. Amy Best studied the scene in San Jose. In her eyes, young people's actions and attitudes toward cars reveal links among gender, ethnicity, material culture, and contemporary social structure."
--Joel Best, author of "Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists"

Bass booms from custom speakers, pick-up trucks boast lowered suspensions, chrome rims reflect stoplights, and bare arms dangle from open windows. Welcome to Santa Clara Street in San Jose, California, where every weekend kids come to cruise late at night, riding their cars slow and low. On the surrounding, less-traveled streets you can also find young men racing customized cars to see who has the "go," not just the "show." And, in the daylight hours, in a nearby suburb, you might find a brand new SUV parked in the driveway, a parents' Sweet 16present.

In Fast Cars, Cool Rides Amy Best provides a fascinating account of kids and car culture. Encompassing everything from learning to drive to getting one's license, from cruising to customizing, from racing to buying one's first car, Best shows that never before have cars played such an important role in the lives of America's youth as they do today. Drawing on interviews with over 100 young men and women, aged 15-24, and five years of research--cruising hot spots, sitting in on auto shop class, attending car shows--Best explores the fast-paced world of kids and their cars. She reveals a world where cars have incredible significance for kids today, as a means of transportation and thereby freedom to come and go, as status symbols and as a means to express their identities. But while having a fast car or a cool ride can carry tremendous importance for these kids, Best shows that the price, especially when it can cost $30,000, can be steep as working-class kids work jobs to make car payments and as college kids forgo moving out of Mom and Dad's house because they can't pay for rent, car payments, and car insurance.

Fast Cars, Cool Rides offers a rare and rich portrait of the complex and surprising roles cars can play in the lives of young Americans. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a cool ride.

What is schizophrenia? Is it a nervous breakdown or a neurochemical malfunction? Why does it develop mostly in late adolescence?

In this groundbreaking and innovative book, Chris Harrop and Peter Trower outline a whole new way of understanding schizophrenia. Controversially, they argue that symptoms seen as psychosis can be linked to the typical psychological development of adolescence and, in particular, to problems constructing an independent, adult self.

This unique psychological account of schizophrenia, written in accessible language, offers insights and practical therapeutic techniques that will be of value to young people with this problem, their families and anyone working with adolescents.

For therapists and all those working in mental health services, particularly those interested in early intervention, this book is essential reading.

‘… a valuable contribution to what remains one of the most problematical issues for health providers, receivers and researchers.’ Dr Paul Patterson

‘… what Peter and Chris have to say is controversial, but I suspect this work will be regarded in time to come as "trail-blazing".’ Professor Max Birchwood

"Mark Fenemore's ambitious yet admirably compact...provides a wide-ranging, richly detailed, nuanced, and insightful cultural and social history of (predominantly male) youth nonconformity in the GDR...this book belongs in the latest generation of pioneering cultural and social histories of the GDR that suggest new approaches and future paths for comparative study." . American Historical Review

..".an insightful, constantly thought-provoking and engaging analysis of the tension between the young people of the GDR and the SED's state system. While historians of the GDR will undoubtedly find a great deal to interest them in Fenemore's work, his insights into neo-Nazism, youth culture in general and the relationship between gender and the state mean his book deserves an audience beyond those interested just in the GDR." . Cultural and Social History

..".a wonderful book on the relationship of masculinity discourses of working-class culture, working-class conservatism and pop culture. Fenemore shows that youth culture is not "left" just because it deviates from the norm. . H-Soz-u-Kult

" The volume] offers a stimulating overview that widens our understanding of the socio-cultural dimension underlying National Socialism." . Historische Zeitschrift

Mark Fenemore has a first class degree in history and a Masters with Distinction. In 2002, he gained his Ph.D. in German Studies from University College London. He has held research fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research in London and the Centre for Historical Research at the University of Limerick. In October 2005, he took up a prestigious Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Manchester Metropolitan University."

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two of the victims of the Columbine massacre, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, reportedly were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. Both allegedly answered “Yes” and were killed. Within days of their death, Cassie and Rachel were hailed as modern-day Christian martyrs, and became useful symbols for those seeking to advance a conservative political agenda. According to police investigators, however, Cassie and Rachel may never have been asked by their killers about God; they simply may have been victims of a senseless crime rather than martyrs to a cause. As the religious and political use of Cassie and Rachel continues, The Martyrs of Columbine provides a careful examination of the available evidence and attempts to discover what really occurred.

In an era of continued globalisation and economic-restructuring youth employment constitutes what many commentators regard as one of the key policy issues of our time. This important new book gives the first comprehensive overview of key concepts, theories and knowledge relating to youth employment in the Tourism sector. Specifically 'Youth Employment in Tourism and Hospitality' discusses rates of youth employment in tourism and hospitality, working conditions for youth and the role of youth employment in tourism in developing countries. It explores barriers to youth employment, from both supply and demand-side perspectives. It reviews the relationship between education, training and youth employment before looking at the education to work transition through the lenses of career decision-making and career development theories. It also discusses the role of tourism internships in early work socialisation, as well as graduate entrepreneurship in tourism. It is essential reading for those delivering and developing tourism programmes, and for students of tourism and hospitality. It also appeals to policy-makers and managers in the wide range of sectors that constitute tourism and hospitality and beyond as well as those in related fields such as education, human resources management and career guidance.

The performing arts is one particular area of youth community practice can that can be effectively tapped to attract youth within schools and out-of-school settings, or what has been referred to as the "third area between school and family." These settings are non-stigmatizing, highly attractive community-based venues that serve youth and their respective communities. They can supplement or enhance formal education, providing a counter-narrative for youth to resist the labels placed on them by serving as a vehicle for reactivity and self-expression. Furthermore, the performing arts are a mechanism through which creative expression can transpire while concomitantly engaging youth in creative expression that is transformative at the individual and community level. Music, Song, Dance, Theater, and Social Work explores the innovative programs and interventions in youth community practice that draw on the performing arts as a way to reach and engage the target populations. The book draws from the rich literature bases in community development and positive youth development, as well as from performing arts therapy and group interventions, offering a meeting point where innovative programs have emerged. All in all, the text is an invaluable resource for graduate social work and performing arts students, practitioners, and scholars.

This volume focuses on using visual research methods with children and young people. Featuring insights from academic experts and established professionals from visual industries, it explores a range of issues from visual ethics to children's interaction with place.