Book chapter
The middle years learner
Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Assessment
Routledge, 4
2025
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Abstract
This chapter examines the historical conceptions and key debates concerned with the terms adolescent and adolescence. Theorists central to understandings of this life stage are discussed. Review of the scholarship demonstrates that interpretations and applications of age-markers to adolescence (age-stage models) are diverse and often construct a deficit view of youth. The three phases of adolescence are considered and an overview of adolescence as a biological and psychological event is explained. Cognitive changes including social, emotional, and moral development are explored. Unique changes to the adolescent brain, a feature distinctly associated with middle years learners, are explained, and implications for teacher practice examined. The chapter draws attention to the significance of providing middle years learners with opportunities to develop prosocial skills that operate as protective factors (e.g., resilience) against problematic behaviours and subsequent negative outcomes. The chapter demonstrates that adolescence is a period of rapid physical growth and change and that these changes have implications for understanding and developing effective pedagogy for the middle years learner.
Details
- Title
- The middle years learner
- Creators
- Katherine Main - Griffith UniversityDonna Pendergast - Griffith UniversityNan Bahr - Southern Cross University
- Contributors
- Donna Pendergast (Editor) - Griffith UniversityKatherine Main (Editor) - Griffith UniversityNan Bahr (Editor) - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Assessment
- Publisher
- Routledge; Oxon, UK
- Edition
- 4
- Identifiers
- 991013225676902368
- Copyright
- © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Donna Pendergast, Katharine Main and Nan Bahr; individual chapters, the contributors.
- Academic Unit
- Office of the Vice Chancellor
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter