Empowered Learning in Secondary Schools

Book excerpt: Positive youth development is a strengths-based, positive psychology approach to fostering adolescents' educational engagement and achievement. It focuses not just on students' academic development but also on their vocational, social, and emotional development. The positive youth development philosophy is at the heart of Cynthia Hazel's unique model of secondary school change, which uses a multi-tiered system of support to challenge the status quo of widespread achievement gaps. In this thought-provoking book, Cynthia Hazel presents her positive youth development-multi-tiered system of support model, including its theoretical foundations, practical instructions for implementing the model, and case examples illustrating application. Recognising that students' own voices are critical to their empowerment and strong outcomes, the model calls for students to participate alongside parents, teachers, and administrators in designing and guiding the school's support structures. The resulting paradigm shift - truly empowered learning - offers hope for all secondary schools, especially those in which many students currently do not achieve postsecondary success.