Conceptual Foundation of the Course

Adolescents develop in social contexts, including families, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and schools. Their development both influences and is influenced by the nature of those contexts. Your success as a teacher will depend, in part, on your understanding of the developing adolescents who will be in your classes, how they can influence your teaching, and how you can support their development into competent adults.

One of the primary tasks of adolescence is to develop identities. These identities are developed in relationship to others in the contexts of classrooms, peer groups, cultural groups, romantic relationships and the like. The identities adolescents develop have an important influence on their decisions to stay in school or drop out, their career choices, whether or not to go to college, and other major life decisions. In this course, you will learn how teachers can influence the kinds of identities students develop.

Learning and development emerge out of interactions with others and in relationship to others. Within the classroom, learning and the motivation to learn are inextricably linked to the quality of these interactions and the social relationships that develop between teachers and students. Relationships with both caring adults in the school setting and a sense of acceptance and respect by peers are vital for adolescents’ academic and social development.   Caring is fundamental component of these relationships in the educational process and provides each adolescent with the opportunity to value ideas, self, and others. The challenge is to construct caring relationships and a classroom climate in which all students are accepted, respected, and involved.

Most TEP students start the program focused on learning how to support students’ learning and academic development in a particular academic curriculum (world languages, science, language arts, social studies, math).  Each classroom (and school) also has a social curriculum that is equally as important for learning and development. The social curriculum includes

• the norms and attitudes that guide personal and interpersonal behavior in the school and classroom;
• the social and emotional behaviors and expectations that are implicitly and explicitly promoted; and
• the social relationships among individuals and groups within the classroom and school.

A fundamental premise of this course is that it is necessary to attend to the social curriculum of the school and your classroom in order to establish a caring climate for learning and development.

In this course we will pay particular attention to the relationships that you have with your students and with their parents/guardians. You will learn strategies for developing and negotiating these relationships as part of building a positive classroom climate. In addition, we will examine nature of the relationships among the students in the school and the ways in which these relationships are related to experiences and learning in the classroom.

Course Objectives 

At the end of Adolescent Development I, we want you to:

• Understand the needs and concerns of the developing adolescent and how they affect your work as a teacher.
• Understand why students learn better and are more willing to engage in classroom activities when they are part of a caring, respectful, and equitable classroom community. In particular, identify ways in which the nature of the classroom community affects your ability to teach your discipline in the way you want.
• Begin to develop techniques for establishing and maintaining a caring, respectful, and equitable classroom community for adolescents.

Course Procedures and Expectations

Each class meeting will focus on a different topic or issue in our consideration of adolescents in schools. The format will be primarily class discussion in both large and small groups. Class meetings will center around discussion of the assigned articles and book chapters that are listed on the course schedule. Your active participation in the course will ensure an excellent learning experience for all of us. After you read an article, be sure to identify the questions that you may have and bring them to class for further discussion and reflection.  Bring the readings and your questions to class on the assigned date.

Students are expected to be on time and to attend all classes.  If a problem arises and you need to miss class, please notify your instructor via email on or before the day of the class that is missed.

Academic Accommodations