reflection

 What is learning across settings and how is it related to issues of equity? Please use at least two quotes from Piha or Banks readings to support your ideas. 

Positive Development in a Disorderly World

Reed W. Larson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Adolescents need to develop competencies to navigate an adult world that is complex and disorderly: a world of heterogeneous
macro- to microecological systems containing contradictions and catch-22s. This exploratory essay examines adolescents’
conscious processes of developing pertinent competencies for pursuing goals (agency) in these kinds of ‘‘real-world’’ settings. It
draws on qualitative longitudinal research on youth’s experiences working on arts and community projects in which they
encounter the irregular dynamics of complex human systems. I describe how youth develop ‘‘strategic thinking’’: executive
skills for formulating strategies based on forecasting dynamics in navigating these systems. I also describe how youth learn to
manage emotions (in self and others) that arise in these real-world transactions and how they develop motivation that sustains
their work toward goals. Even as we learn more about the biological hardware of development, I argue that we must study
youth’s conscious, proactive processes in developing their own ‘‘software’’ to navigate complex and disorderly human worlds.

The current global recession is a poignant reminder of
how disorderly the world is that adolescents must
prepare to enter. Over the years exuberant investors
and ordinary people accumulated enormous debt,
precipitating a chain reaction that cascaded through
every sector of the economy and part of the world:
foreclosures, bankruptcies, and unemploymentFes-
pecially among young people. The theories and sta-
tistical models of economicsFthe most math-based
social scienceFwere proven drastically wrong (during
the crash, some indicators were falling outside pre-
dictions by as much as 25 SD units per day). The lesson
was that economic systems are much less predictable
than thought. As John Maynard Keynes had argued,
heterogeneous processes are at work; different situa-
tions bring forth different dynamics (Skidelsky, 2009).

Other human ecological systems (à la Bronfen-
brenner, 1979, or Lerner, 2002) present adolescents
with similar unruliness. Political systems, commu-
nity institutions, familiesFall exhibit dynamics that

can sometimes be just plain bizarre. We have ‘‘Banks
too big to fail’’; abundant examples of dysfunction
across multiple levels of government; structural
racism in societies founded on principles of equality;
and cultural wars among people from the same
culture. Adolescents must be prepared to deal with
macro- to microsystems containing contradictions,
catch-22s, bureaucracy, and b.s.

Globalization and modernization have not created
a more orderly world for youth. Since the European
Renaissance, many people have believed the world
was evolving toward becoming a rational, just, and
well-functioning machine. Yet, in the words of soci-
ologist Anthony Giddens (1990), ‘‘living in the
modern world is more like being aboard a careening
juggernaut than being in a carefully controlled and
well-driven motor car ’’ (p. 53).

In this paper, I explore what this disorder means
for adolescents’ conscious process of develop-
mentFor positive development. What are the com-
petencies they need to develop for navigating
adulthood in a disorderly world? And how do they
develop theseFwhat are the processes? To think
about these questions, I am going to focus on acqui-
sition of competencies for agencyFfor working to-
ward goals in real-world contexts. In the heart of the
paper, I discuss adolescents’ development of compe-
tencies in three domains (emotional, motivational,
and cognitive ecological) that are important to
achieving goals in an unruly world. To examine de-
velopment within each domain I draw on research on
middle adolescents’ experiences working on arts and
community projects in organized youth programs. At

r 2011 The Author

Journal of Research on Adolescence r 2011 Society for Research on Adolescence

DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00707.x

Presidential Address, delivered at the Meetings of the Society
for Research on Adolescence, Philadelphia, PA, March 12, 2010.
The research described in the address was funded by the William
T. Grant FoundationFto whom I am extremely grateful. Thanks
also to Hyeyoung Kang, Aisha Griffith, and Sharon Irish for as-
sistance with this paper, as well to Kate Walker, Dave Hansen,
Nickki Pearce Dawes, Patrick Sullivan, Natasha Watkins, Dustin
Wood, Jenell Kelly, Vikki Rompala, Robin Jarrett, Jodi Dworkin,
Rachel Angus, Aimee Rickman, Colleen Gibbons, Philip Hoffman,
and many others who worked on the project. Copies of our articles
are at http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu. This address is dedicated
to my father, Curtis L. Larson, a ‘‘farm kid’’ and professor of civil
engineering, from whom I learned to think strategically about
complex real-world problems.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Reed W. Larson, De-
partment of Human and Community Development, University of
Illinois, 904 W. Nevada St., Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: larsonr@
illinois.edu

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 21(2), 317 – 334

http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu

http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu

http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu

http://www.youthdev.uiuc.edu

mailto:larsonr@illinois.edu

mailto:larsonr@illinois.edu

the end, I conclude with general points for future
theory and research on adolescent positive develop-
ment. An overarching theme is that our field needs to
better understand the challenges that young people
face in learning to navigate complexity and disorder.

DEVELOPMENT IN A COMPLEX WORLD

The world is not entirely unpredictable. There is
order. But the neat and tidy diagrams we use to
depict the human ecology can lull us into thinking
there is more order than actually exists. If the anal-
ogy is to biological ecosystems, they contain tre-
mendous disarray. In nature, innumerable microbial
to macrobiological systems interact in inter-
twinedFbut also competitive and chaoticFways.
Similarly, when we are talking about the human
ecologyFthe ‘‘real world’’ that adolescents must
learn to deal withFa crucial point is that all of
Bronfenbrenner ’s different systems are composed
of human minds, each with idiosyncratic ways of
thinking and acting. No wonder things get bizarre.

The human world that adolescents must learn to
navigate is less like the logically ordered world of
physics that Leibnitz, Descartes, and other founders
of modern science imagined and more like a
blooming, buzzing Darwinian jungle. Human sys-
tems are ‘‘messy systems’’ (Moss, 2001). The nu-
merous micro- to macrosystems in the human world
each partly functions according to its own distinct
rules, culture, and history. I am going to use ‘‘het-
erogeneous’’ regularly to remind us of these multiple
dynamics at play within and between systems. What
is critical is that these systems are not passive. They
are active, sometimes passionately reactive.

So there is order, but it is not tidy, static, and
logical. It is pluralistic, dynamic, and ‘‘eco-logical.’’
This complexity shapes the developmental chal-
lenges faced by adolescents. I will illustrate this later
with the example of a group of youth who were
trying to get principals to adhere to a school district’s
disciplinary code. To run a successful campaign to
achieve this formidable goal, they had to understand
the different ways that school board members,
principals, teachers, and students think and adapt
their actions accordingly. They had to use ecological
reasoning adapted to the functioning of these differ-
ent systems.

Adolescents must learn to navigate this com-
plexity. William James suggested that: ‘‘We carve out
order by leaving the disorderly part out.’’ This is
on the front page of a book How Doctor’s Think
(Groopman, 2007), and maybe doctors can get away
with it. But adolescents cannot. This is especially true

if you are poor or a youth of color. When Frank
Furstenberg (2006) spoke at the SRA meeting in San
Francisco, he described how being poor is like a
game where the dice are loaded against youFeach
roll adding to the cumulative odds of disadvantage.
Margaret Spencer (2006) described how African
American male youth are subject to catch-22s across
micro- to macroecological systems. But regardless of
class or race, a young person trying to get a toehold in
the adult world needs to develop competencies to
navigate disorder and complexityFas best they can.
They need to develop competencies for agency in
real-world settings.

The Problem of Human Agency in a Disorderly
World

Agency is the ability to set goals and organize one’s
actions to reach them (Bandura, 2006): to get from
Point A to a chosen Point B. This ability is crucial to
adulthood in modern societies. The promise since
the Enlightenment has been a world in whichF
as visualized by the Nobel economist, Amartya
Sen (1999)Fall people are free to realize their capa-
bilities.

But to achieve this, young people need to develop
competencies to work toward goals. Adolescents and
emerging adults need these competencies to reach
the goal of meaningful adult employment. They
need skills to navigate a labyrinth to adult work that
is increasingly destandardized, complex, and disor-
derly (du Bois-Reymond & Chisholm, 2006; Meijers,
1998). Then, if you get employment, more and more
jobs require skills for dealing with unstructured
problems and trying to achieve difficult real-world
goals (i.e., creating, developing, implementing). Jobs
requiring rote labor are paying less and disappearing
(Levy & Murnane, 2004). Young people need these
competencies in other domains as well. Abilities to
work toward goals (e.g., to change your life cir-
cumstances) are also important to adults’ well-being
(Cantor, 1990; Little, Snyder, & Wehmeyer, 2006).
Furthermore, we especially need a new generation of
young people who can use these competencies to
address pressing economic, social justice, and eco-
logical problems (Bandura, 2006; Ginwright, 2010).
Abilities to exercise agency are important not only to
individuals, but to our collective well-being.

To help us think about what is entailed in these
competencies for agency, let me provide a definition:
Abilities to organize and regulate actions over time to
work toward a long-term goal, as an individual or with
others, in complex real-world contexts. Notice that I am
talking about ‘‘work.’’ Notice also that I see agency

318 LARSON

as not just individual; it can be collaborative. But part
of the ‘‘problem of agency’’ is that reaching goals in
real-world contexts is not easy.

To get from A to B in the real world, young people
first need cognitive skills to navigate ecological com-
plexity. In real-life situations the pathway to a goal is
not always clear; you may have to find or create it.
You need to figure out and deal with the challenges
and obstacles in the way. You need to navigate dis-
orderly ecological systemsFand the people who
compose them. In sum, part of the problem of agency
for adolescents is development of cognitive-ecolo-
gical skillsFecological reasoningFto navigate the
heterogeneity and complexity of the real world.

A Limited and Wayward Organ

But that is only part of the problem of agency.
Reaching goals in a disorderly world also depends
on a person’s limited human mindFwhich philos-
ophers for millennia have recognized to be ‘‘a flimsy
and wayward organ’’ (Shorto, 2008, p. 20). It con-
tributes its own forms of disorder, its own distinct
challenges. To achieve goals in the real world, ado-
lescents need to develop competencies to navigate
these.

I am going to discuss two major limits or chal-
lenges of the human mind that are central to youth’s
development of agency. First, a person’s ability to get
to Point B is subject to human emotions. The anger,
anxiety, and even joy that can arise in trying to reach
a real-world goal can disrupt work, derail effort, and
distort thinking. For adolescents, puberty increases
this emotional reactivity (Steinberg, 2007). In three
studies, including one in India, we found that ado-
lescents (signaled at random times over a week) re-
ported experiencing wider extremes of emotions
than adults providing similar reports. These in-
cluded both more extreme negative and positive
emotions (Larson & Sheeber, 2008). Dahl (2004)
suggests the adolescent brain is like a ‘‘natural tin-
derbox’’ in which strong emotions and drives can
‘‘hijack’’ attention. To develop agency, adolescents
need to gain competencies to navigate or manage
these emotions.

The other developmental challenge I will discuss
is motivational. To reach a difficult goal, you must
devote sustained effort to it. Plenty of adults have
difficulties with motivation and do not complete
goals they set for themselves (Gollwitzer, 1999; Steel,
2007). Motivation easily stalls: ‘‘I’d better check email
before I work on my thesis.’’ As I will discuss, these
motivational issues can be a larger barrier for ado-
lescents. Many teens’ have a limited time perspective

(Nurmi, 2004). So development of competencies to
sustain motivation is important to agency.1

Now it is tempting to see these challenges of the
human mind as internal and separate from the dis-
order of the real worldFas issues concerning teens’
development of ‘‘self-regulation.’’ But many emo-
tional and motivational challenges that obstruct
agency occur in response to interactions with the
external world. They arise as part of the process
of working toward a goal: frustration with lack of
progress, anger at people who are uncooperative, or
lapses in motivation due to tasks becoming repetitive
and tedious. So even though I will deal with them as
distinct competencies, they are interrelated with the
complexity of interactions with the world.

In this paper I discuss these three subprob-
lemsFor challengesFfor adolescents’ development
of agency. I will cover the two ‘‘human mind’’ chal-
lenges first, because they are more familiar. I start
with the emotional challenges to agency and youth’s
acquisition of emotional competencies to address
them, then the same for motivational development.
Third, I discuss the challenges of navigating a dis-
orderly world and acquisition of cognitive-ecological
skills for navigating it. For each, I explore the two
questions of what develops and how it develops.

POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Before doing this, however, I want to briefly review
two other topics that have been building blocks of
positive development thinking and research.

Adolescents’ Cognitive Potentials

To this point, it may seem like I have a pessimistic
view of the human conditionFall this talk of dis-
order and disruptive emotions. But like many posi-
tive developmentalists I believe that, despite these
obstacles, adolescents have powerful, often unreal-
ized strengths and potentials (Lerner, Phelps, For-
man, & Bowers, 2009). This includes the capacity to
be conscious, deliberate producers of their own devel-
opment (Lerner, 2002). This optimism comes partly
from research suggesting that adolescence is a period
for acquisition of higher-order executive functions,
including those pertinent to emotional, motivational,
and cognitive-ecological competencies.

1A third important limit or challenge of the human mind-
Fwhich I will only touch on in passingFis the many cognitive
flaws, fallacies, and biases that psychologists are always uncov-
ering. A fuller treatment would consider how youth develop
competencies to navigate these.

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 319

Brain development. Although we know little
about the adolescent brain, evidence suggests that
the teenage years are a time when there is con-
siderable development of command and control
centers in the prefrontal cortex as well as formation
of more neural connections across regions of the
brain that potentially provide greater integration
including between emotional, volitional, and other
functions (Paus, 2009). Now one view of existing
evidence is that adolescents’ acquisition of executive
functions is primarily driven by brain maturation
and that this maturation must precede acquisition
of these functions.2 A contrasting view is that
adolescents’ experiences drive the development of
these functions (and the corresponding changes in
the brain). At the moment, causal evidence is limited
(Paus, 2009). But there is substantial evidence from
other species and other periods of the human life
span indicating that experience can, at least partly,
influence neural development (Fox, Levitt, & Nelson,
2010; Paus, 2008).

Steinberg et al. (2006) suggest that we think of
adolescence as a critical period for brain development
related to executive functions. Bunge and Zelazo
(2006) suggest there may be a sequence of critical
periods. A critical period is a developmental win-
dow when specific functions in the brain are open
to being shaped by experience. Again, evidence is
limited, and caution is needed. The idea that
adolescents might be conscious producers of their
own brain development remains an enormous leap
(and inevitably a gross oversimplification). Yet it
is plausible to think of the adolescent brain as
progressively ready for experiences that contri-
bute to acquisition of higher levels of executive
functions.

Cognitive development. Let me discuss what
these higher-order functions are. We have learned
from cognitive research that the new reasoning
potentials of adolescence are much more varied and
diverse than Piaget ever imagined (Kuhn, 2009).
Daniel Keating (2004) described the development of
an executive suite of new capabilities. These include
planning, self-governance, goal-directed behavior,
values, and principles (Steinberg et al., 2006). They
also include capabilities for selective inhibition,
inductive reasoning from evidence, and epistemic
understanding (Kuhn, 2009; Moshman, 2005). In

sum, this suite includes an eclectic mix of different
advanced and ‘‘meta’’ capabilities, whichFat least
potentiallyFdevelop and become integrated with
each other over adolescence and beyond.

A characteristic of many of these functions is
increased ability to think about dynamic processes in
systems. This includes thinking about dynamics
within and between complex systems (Fischer &
Bidell, 2006). For example, adolescents gain
capacities for navigating situations in which they
need to reconcile competing demands and goals
(Kuhn, 2009). This also includes abilities to think
about the dynamics of messy human systems (e.g.,
emotional, motivational, ecological processes). An
important line of research shows that adolescents’
develop new abilities to think about the dynamic
causal processes underlying the ordering of events
in a person’s life (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, & Hallett,
2003; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).

This executive suite and these potentials for
dynamic systems thinking are relevant not only to
what adolescents learn. They are also relevant to how
they learn it. Kuhn (2009) suggests that adolescents’
new potentials provide them analytic tools to be
producers of their own development. They become
able to consciously reflect on their experiences, draw
conclusions, and create rules for navigating different
types of situations.

There are significant limitations, however, to our
knowledge about adolescents’ acquisition of these
higher-order functions. First, we do not know much
about what kinds of conscious executive skills, insights,
or tools youth actually develop, especially for navi-
gating a disorderly world. Most of the findings
on adolescents’ cognitive development come from
controlled laboratory studies and research on
prestructured problems. This is a plus in that these
methods give us more confidence in the findings. But
it also means we know little about adolescents’
acquisition of executive skills for regulating goal-
directed actions in real-world contextsFin which
problems are unstructured and heterogeneous
processes are at play (Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, &
Matusov, 1994).

We know even less about how adolescents develop
these higher-order functions. Authors writing about
adolescents’ executive skills stress that they are
‘‘potentials’’Fsome youth may develop them but
not others. The assumption is that their dev-
elopment depends on having the requisite ex-
periences. But what are these experiences? If youth
are producers of their development of executive
functions, how does this occur? One of our early
steps should surely be interviewing youth about

2In the presidential address, I displayed a public service ad-
vertisement with a picture of the ‘‘16-year-old brain’’ that showed
a large hole in the prefrontal cortex and referred to it as a ‘‘missing
part’’ of the teenage brain (New York Times, 2009).

320 LARSON

their learning experiences and how they might
‘‘produce’’ these skills.

Youth Programs as Contexts for Developing These
Potentials

Organized youth programs are a good place to do
this. Positive developmentalists have had a special
interest in studying programs (i.e., community-
based programs and extracurricular activities) as a
natural laboratory for observing development. High-
quality programs provide conditions that research
suggests facilitate positive socioemotional develop-
mentFsuch as being youth centered and supervised
by supportive adults (Eccles & Gootman, 2002). In a
meta-analysis, Durlak, Weissberg, and Pachan (2010)
found that high-quality programs had effect sizes
averaging .31 for socioemotional skills. Evidence
suggests strongest effects for low-income youth
(Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, & Zarrett, 2009;
McLoyd et al., 2009).

I have argued that organized programs are a
particularly good setting for observing adolescents’
acquisition of executive skills, including those for
agency (Larson, 2000). Many programs for high-
school-aged youth engage them in projectsFwork-
ing toward difficult goals. In the research I will
discuss, half the programs were arts or technology
programs and youth worked on creating a mural,
CD, musical production, or computer graphics. The
other half were leadership or activism programs, and
youth’s projects included creating a day camp for
children, making a video about inequalities in city
transit service, and lobbying officials (Wood, Larson,
& Brown, 2009). What is important is that youth in
high-quality programs typically have significant
control over their projects, thus they have opportu-
nities for exercise and, possibly, development of ex-
ecutive competencies. Further, these projects present
youth with unstructured problems in complex hu-
man systems (Halpern, 2009; Mahoney et al., 2009),
and they required that youth deal with the types of
emotional and motivational challenges that inevita-
bly arise in such work.

In order to observe these youth’s developmental
experiences, we followed them over the natural
course of their projects (2 – 9 months). The 11 pro-
grams in the study were mostly small local programs
run by an agency. A few were in schools, and one in a
church. Six were in working class or poor urban
neighborhoods, the rest in rural areas or small cities.
We selected 8 – 12 representative youth at each pro-
gram (the sample included 36 White, 32 African
American, and 32 Latino youth). Then we conducted

periodic interviews with them during their projects
(712 total interviews). Our staff also interviewed
program leaders and observed program activities
across this period, but they are not a main focus here.

Our goal was developing grounded theory about
these youth’s conscious developmental processes
over time, as they worked on their projects, includ-
ing processes related to acquiring emotional, moti-
vation, and cognitive-ecological skills.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Emotions present challenging puzzles to adoles-
cents, and solving these puzzles is crucial to their
development of agency. The emotions that arise in
working toward goals in real-world settings can
derail attention and disrupt the work. Immanuel
Kant described emotions as ‘‘diseases of the mind.’’

Yet Darwin and current emotion psychologists
view emotions as innate systems that serve impor-
tant functions in regulating interactions with a dis-
orderly world. First, emotions arouse and direct
energy and attention in important ways. Cannon
(1932) stressed their role in redirecting attention to
basic survival needs (e.g., fight, flight); more recent
theorists recognize that emotions can also direct at-
tention to higher-order goals (Gross & Thompson,
2007). Second, emotions can promote and regulate
social interactions (Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000).
Third, the experience of emotions can provide a
person with useful information and assist with
healthy decision making, although emotions can also
mislead (Reyna & Farley, 2006; Schwarz & Clore,
1983).

So, emotions can be disease-like, direct attention
away from goals, and be misleading. But they can
also serve important functions in regulating inter-
actions with the world, including directing attention
toward higher-order goals. Such are the puzzles that
adolescents face.3 Further, emotions are abstract;
they can be private, repressed, or feigned. Strong
emotions have peculiar disorderly dynamics: They
can mess with your perception and reasoning.

Figuring out these peculiar dynamics is an im-
portant developmental task of adolescenceFone I
suggest is partly shaped by evolution. In contrast to
species with fixed action patterns that dictate an
organism’s response to given types of situa-
tions, emotions in humans are clearly designed to
allow our big brains the opportunity for cognitive

3Emotions are also puzzling to researchers. Ochsner and Gross
(2007) describe them as ‘‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma’’ (p. 87).

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 321

mediationFto think before we act. Humans have
latitude to develop knowledge, skills, and cultural
understandings that shape when we experience an-
ger or joy. Humans also can potentially learn how to
respond to complex situations in mature ways con-
sistent with higher-order goals (Gross & Thompson,
2007), although most of us never fully get there. The
developmental task is not just learning about emo-
tions, but about emotional episodes: learning how
different situations elicit emotions and how the
subsequent emotional dynamics can then unfold.

Of course much emotional learning occurs in
childhood (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Withering-
ton, 2006). But adolescence provides the opportunity
for youth to apply their new executive suite to the
complexity of emotions. They can develop advanced
skills for mediatingFor steering throughFthe dy-
namics of emotional episodes. Indeed, learning to
manage one’s emotions in relation to long-term goals
is seen as a central feature of becoming mature
(Steinberg et al., 2006).

Adolescent scholars, unfortunately, have not had
much to contribute on how this occurs. The recent
Handbook of Emotional Regulation (Gross, 2007) has
five chapters on emotional development, but not
oneFnor a single citation in the indexFon adoles-
cence. Likewise our own Handbook of Adolescence
Psychology does not have a chapter or citations to
emotional development (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009), a
reflection of the lack of research. When we discuss
adolescents’ emotionsFand there is good work (e.g.,
Allen & Sheeber, 2009)Fthey are typically viewed in
relation to mental health problems. But it is impor-
tant for us to study positive adolescent emotional
development. What can adolescents learn, and how
do they learn it?

Youth Programs as a Laboratory for Learning About
Emotional Episodes

Organized programs are a good context to study this
development, because youth’s projects elicit emo-
tions and these can influence their work. Youth in
our research reported experiencing frequent ‘‘hot’’
emotional episodes. These included episodes of
negative emotions, such as4:

� anger at others, especially disorderly peers: ‘‘I
was ready to snap, to flip at somebody’’;

� anxiety about outcomes: ‘‘My nerves got to
me, dry mouth’’;

� unhappiness with outcomes: ‘‘We did really
badly on a dance; we did horribly.’’

They also included positive emotions:

� Happiness from doing well ‘‘that was really
exciting because we were going to be able to
get it done.’’

In intensive analysis of a theater program in the
research, we found that these repeated negative and
positive emotional episodes appeared to provide
youth with valuable information for their emotional
learning (Larson & Brown, 2007). The program
leaders had cultivated a culture in which emotions
were accepted, discussed, and dealt with appropri-
ately. As a result, differing emotional episodes ten-
ded to play out according to fairly predictable
scenarios. Negative emotionsFmost often anger at
peersFwere met with support for dealing with
them. Positive emotions, often exhilaration from
doing well, were reinforced.

We borrowed the idea from attachment theory
that these repeated emotional sequences within the
program created a predictable ‘‘matrix’’ of emotional
experiences, one that provided data for youth’s
emotional learning. Indeed, across all 11 programs,
youth reported much learning about emotions and
emotional episodes.

What Youth Learned

They reported emotional learning that fit into two
categories: knowledge of emotional episodes and
skills for managing these episodes. These two cate-
gories approximately match the latter two categories
of Salovey and Mayer’s (1990) four types of emo-
tional intelligence.

The knowledge of emotional episodes that youth
learned dealt with the dynamic sequence of these
episodes. They reported learning about what caused
or contributed to elicitation of emotions, for example,
the role of different personalities, physical states like
tiredness, and different types of situations. They also
reported learning about how emotional episodes
unfold, for example, how emotions can be conta-
gious in a group (e.g., ‘‘When one person is angry,
other people get angry’’) and how emotions influ-
ence thought and behavior (e.g., how strong positive
emotion ‘‘wipes away fear and doubt’’). This learn-
ing included knowledge about the dynamics of
emotional episodes in oneself, in other people, and in
groups.

The skills youth learned involved strategies for
managing emotional episodes. The strategies they

4The categories presented resulted from coding by Philip
Hoffman of data from the 11 programs. Passages in italics are
representative quotes from each category.

322 LARSON

reported gaining for negative emotions resembled
familiar categories from coping research: limiting
expression to others, perseverance, reframing, social
support, and problem-focused coping. Learning to
limit expression of and persevere through emotion-
eliciting situations were most common. One young
man, for example, had learned ‘‘how to cooperate
and just listen; try to control my emotions without
taking it out on others.’’ The underlying theme was
that goals of the work generally took precedence
over their feelings of stress, frustration, or anger at a
disorderly or undesirable situation. The play must
go on! They were learning to control their emotions
in relation to long-term goals.

Research with adults shows that unmanaged
negative emotions in working groups can create
‘‘chains’’ of emotional contagion that last for weeks
and disrupt work (Liu & Perewé, 2005). A number of
youth indicated that it was preventing this kind of
emotional contagion that had motivated their learn-
ing to not express negative emotions.

These teens also reported learning management of
positive emotions. This involved not just controlling
these emotions, but using them. A youth in the the-
ater program had learned that ‘‘triumph is a big
source of motivation. I carry [it] over to the scenes
I’m not quite so comfortable with.’’ Emotions are not
just ‘‘diseases’’ to be quashed. A young woman
serving as the stage manager in this program de-
scribed learning to use the contagiousness of positive
emotions to lift the morale and effort of the group.

Some youth’s learning suggested quite sophisti-
cated understanding of emotional dynamics. Con-
suelo had frequent experiences of anger and
frustration during her work on a mural at Art First.
Asked what she had learned about negative emo-
tions, she said:

You learn how to take them in and let them go in
through one [end] and just out the other. . . . I
guess, we just took them in and, like, understood
them. They’re something you shouldn’t dwell on
because they’re not going to last forever.

Research shows that people tend to think emo-
tions are going to last longer than they actually do
and also that dwelling onFor suppressingFnega-
tive emotions can prolong and intensify them
(Loewenstein, 2007). Consuelo appeared to have
learned a strategy for Zen acceptance of these human
tendencies: Take it in; understand it; let it go.

In conclusion, youth were learning that emotional
episodes involve predictable dynamic processes in
the interactions between situations and the self. They

were also developing executive strategies for shap-
ing these episodes in ways that served the goals of
their project.

How Youth Learned

What was the developmental process through which
this emotional learning occurred? A first finding of
our analysis was that most youth described them-
selves as the agents of this process. Across the 11
programs, there were times when they reported
emotional learning from the role modeling provided
by adult leaders, for example, when a leader handled
a difficult situation with grace and skill. Some re-
ported learning through emotion coaching from a
leader. The leaders also appeared to have important
roles in youth’s learning that the youth did not
mention, such as in cultivating the emotion-friendly
culture in the theater program. But these young
people most often attributed their learning to their
own thought process, using words like, I saw that . . .,
I discovered that . . ., I’ve been working on that. Some-
times they attributed their learning to the group’s
collective thought process: We realized that . . .

The process they described was one of learning
from comparison and analysis. Teens become capable
of inductive and deductive reasoning (Kuhn, 2009).
Youth reported learning by comparing emotions in
one situation to another and between themselves
and peers. So they indeed were drawing on their
matrix of prior experiences. But unlike in attachment
theory’s account of early emotion learning, this was
conscious learning through deliberate analysis.

Youth also described learning from evaluating the
demands of situations they were in. A young woman
explained her process: ‘‘You just have to analyze why
you’re frustrated and then go on and find a solu-
tion.’’ In addition they learned from thought experi-
ments in which they thought through different
courses of action, and how they would work. They
reported learning, for example, because: ‘‘You real-
ize, you do not have a choice’’ or ‘‘I do not want to
bring the group down.’’ It appeared youth were us-
ing their new executive skills to analyze the temporal
and causal ordering of ‘‘hot’’ emotional episodes.

A View of Adolescents and Emotions

In concluding this section, I want to suggest an al-
ternative to the frequent image of adolescents as
being emotionally out of control. These Anglo,
Latino, and African American youth were experi-
encing strong emotions. But they were also engaged
in learning to mediate these emotions in relationship

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 323

to complex real-world situations and project goals.
They were solving puzzles and figuring out the
peculiar dynamics of emotional episodes.

One youth said: ‘‘Once you analyze why you’re
mad or happy or frustrated and then you listen to
yourself, it just seems so surreal. Like, ‘Oh my god!’
And it’s good.’’ Now, I do not want to disregard
early childhood and the many diverse factors that
shape affective experience: Emotions have deep
roots. But adolescence provides an important de-
velopmental opportunity for teens to program their
‘‘big brains’’ to mediate the abstract and sometimes
surreal person – environment dynamics of emotional
episodes. These exploratory findings, of course, need
replication and further study.

MOTIVATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

To discuss the motivational component of the prob-
lem of human agency, a good place to start is the
problem of adolescent boredom. Midadolescence is a
peak developmental period for boredom (Larson &
Richards, 1991; Schulenberg & Maslowsky, 2010).
Research also shows that children’s school motiva-
tion declines as they move into middle and high
school (Eccles & Roeser, 2009; Wigfield, Eccles,
Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006), accompanied
by decreased willingness to take on challenging tasks
(Eccles & Roeser, 2009).

As far as I know, there is no evolutionary evidence
that a ‘‘boredom gene’’ kicks in at this age period. To
the contrary, much research and theory suggests that
humans of all ages have a built in system of intrinsic
motivation that can make learning engaging (Izard &
Ackerman, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000). My mentor,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990), found that engage-

ment with challenging activities leads to the state of
‘‘flow,’’ which is intrinsically rewarding.

This intrinsic motivation can be powerful, but it
also can be fragile. Csikszentmihalyi and others
found that this motivation depends on the level of
the challenges in an activity being matched to a
person’s skill level: If the challenges are too high
people get overwhelmed and anxious; if too low,
bored. You need to be in a ‘‘channel’’ in which
challenges and skills are matched. This requirement
could make it hard to sustain ‘‘flow’’ trying to
achieve goals in disorderly real-world contexts, be-
cause the challenges are likely to be diverse and
uneven.

A huge developmental question (one that goes
back to Plato) is how to get this system of intrinsic
motivation turned on and sustained for adoles-
centsFparticularly in activities with the kind of
challenges they will face navigating real-world tasks
as adults. We know a lot about adolescents’ moti-
vation, especially in school, but little about the pro-
cesses of motivational change and development
(Wigfield et al., 2006).

Youth programs are a good place to study this
change process. Experience sampling studies show
this is the only context in teens’ lives where they
consistently experience high motivation in chal-
lenging activities (Larson, 2000; Vandell et al., 2006).
By contrast, in school they are challenged but not
motivated; with friends, motivated but not chal-
lenged (Figure 1). Now research indicates that not all
teens join programs with high initial motivation
(Perkins et al., 2007). My former student Nickki
Pearce Dawes (2008) had the idea of studying youth
in our research who experienced upward motiva-
tional changes. She identified 39 youth who reported
a notable increase, then analyzed their accounts of

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In Youth Programs In Class
Free Time

With Friends

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Challenge MotivationMotivation Challenge ChallengeMotivation

z-score

FIGURE 1 Average challenges and motivation reported in three daily contexts. High-school-aged adolescents’ provided ratings of their
current experience when signaled at random times across the waking hours of the day, using the Experience Sampling Method. Data came
from Time 2 of a longitudinal study of 220 youth (Larson, Moneta, Richards, & Wilson, 2002).

324 LARSON

what happened. This is an analytic technique of ex-
amining ‘‘turning points’’ in experiences (Lofland,
Snow, Anderson, & Lofland, 2006). I will provide a
very condensed version of the findings (Dawes,
2008; Dawes & Larson, in press).

Many western theories of motivation are based on
the assumption that all motivation is rooted in basic
individual psychological drives or needsFwe tend
to believe in the ‘‘selfish gene.’’ Dawes found that the
39 youth had three different explanations for their
motivational change, but only one fit this assump-
tion. First, a few attributed their change to experi-
ences of competency, a core need in a number of
motivational theories (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000). As
one said: ‘‘I started doing it, I started doing it pretty
well, so that got me more motivated.’’

Many more youth attributed their motivational
change to forming a connection between program
activities and their future, often a future career
(Dawes, 2008). Marina illustrates this. She had joined
an FFA program because many members were male.
But she explained:

It’s not just about the guys anymore. . . . I am go-
ing to be a teacher . . . . It will give me all the skills,
hopefully that I need to be a good teacher; . . . it’s
the things I get out of it now

Marina’s experiences in the program helped her
both decide she wanted to be a teacher and recognize
that the program was helping her develop the req-
uisite knowledge and skills. Quite a number of youth
in our research described using the programs to
engage in proactive processes of ‘‘finding fit’’ be-
tween their evolving career plans and their emerging
sense of self (Rickman, 2009). Dawes (2008) called
this ‘‘forming a personal connection.’’

Now, in some theories, motivation driven by fu-
ture rewards is viewed as extrinsic. It is seen as
‘‘secondary motivation,’’ derived from basic drives
and thus less potent. But for these youth, their new
motivation was quite internal, authentic, and pow-
erful. It was not easily reducible to individual needs
or drives. Planning and preparing for the future is a
task of adolescence in our culture. Forming a con-
nection from the program to future goals really got
their fires lit.

The idea that motivation depends only on basic
individual drives was further challenged by the third
explanation for motivational change, most frequent
in three activism programs (but which occurred in
others as well, including a faith-based program). All
three activism programs were in a city in which
40 hours of service were required for high school

graduation, and many youth said they joined the
program to get their hours. As a result, they were not
very motivated initially. But let me describe what
happened in one program (see also Pearce & Larson,
2007).

At Youth Action, a main focus of the work by the
African American and Latino members was lobbying
the school board to direct the city’s principals to follow
the district’s Uniform Disciplinary Code. The principals
sometimes suspended students for minor infrac-
tionsFlike being late for class or using a cell phoneF
that were not sanctioned by this code. The youth’s work
at Youth Action included surveying students across the
city, and they found that unsanctioned suspensions
were frequent, especially in schools that were predom-
inantly African American and Latino. Many Youth
Action members had had a bad experience or two with
the schools, but they had only seen it as a personal
experience. As they heard students’ stories, however,
they began to realize that worse things were happening
to thousands of students.

This realization gave their work larger and more
powerful meaning. They formed a personal con-
nection between their personal experiences, those
of other youth, and the goals of their work. This
transformed their motivation. Danny from Youth
Action recounted how at first: ‘‘I wasn’t super-
interested . . . [but when] I found out a lot of stuff
about the schools, what they were doing, I was like
‘Hey, that’s wrong!’ because that [had] happened to
me.’’ He then described becoming ‘‘really into it,
really psyched.’’ Similar transformative experi-
ences were described at other programs (see also
Ginwright, 2010). At El Concilio, youth planned
activities aimed at keeping teens out of gangs.
Jennifer said she joined only to get her service
hours, but: ‘‘I realized that a lot of kids have been
dying because of the gangs, and I want to stop
that.’’

This third explanation for motivational change fits
William Damon’s (2008) concept of acquiring pur-
pose. He defines purpose as: ‘‘a stable and general-
ized intention to accomplish something that is at
once meaningful to the self and of consequence to
the world beyond the self’’ (Damon, Menon, &
Bronk, 2003, p. 121). Notice that this motivation in-
volves the self, but it is not at the center. The con-
nection is to a cause ‘‘beyond the self.’’ Damon
rejects the idea that purpose can be reduced to core
drives. Indeed, cultural psychologist Joan Miller
(2003) describes how in many cultures much of
people’s motivation entails subordination of the self
to the group, a point also made by Graham and
Taylor (2002).

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 325

In sum, for youth who gave explanations in the
last two categories (for the future and purpose), their
process of motivational change was not easily re-
ducible to a core drive or need. I am not saying that
basic needs had no role, but the bigger story is how
motivation emerged from youth’s proactive pro-
cesses of discovery, finding fit, and meaning mak-
ing.5 The change occurred through their conscious
constructive process of forming a personal connec-
tion. This process is quite similar to Ryan and Deci’s
(2000) concept that motivation increases progres-
sively as a person identifies with an activity and then
integrates the activity into the self.

Most of these 39 youth also described coming to
have flow-like experiences: their work had become
‘‘fun,’’ ‘‘exciting,’’ and ‘‘interesting.’’ They reported
that the challenges of the work had become self-
rewarding. In other words, the change appeared to
have activated the kind of powerful reward system
described by theories of intrinsic motivation. The
personal connection also appeared to give youth the
staying power to preserver through boring activities,
hard work, and real-world obstaclesFtimes when
challenges were too low or too high. They had de-
veloped sustained motivation to achieve the goals of
their work.

So these youth seemed to progress from low mo-
tivation to personal connection to flow and sustained
engagement. I hypothesized a next step in which
they transfer skills for creating this kind of motiva-
tion from youth programs to other challenging ac-
tivities (Larson, 2000), but the data on this were
inconclusive. Given the possibility of ‘‘self-selection
effects,’’ we also need to be careful about assuming
the change process found for this group can readily
occur for all youth. On the other hand, it may be that
this kind of motivation can occur for most teens, if
only the right personal connection can be found.

An important implication of these results is that
adolescents do not need to be motivated when they
enter a setting or start a project. Motivation can
emerge. And it can become quite powerful, sustain-
ing engagement through the thick and thin of real-
world projects. The qualification, however, is that
adults cannot push a button to make youth moti-
vated (unless they are indoctrinating them into an
ideology or sect that provides meaning; see Patel,
2007). It depends on young people’s constructive

process of finding and creating a personal connec-
tion. This means adults need to take seriously
youth’s conscious developing selves.

COGNITIVE-ECOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

We have discussed how youth learn to manage, or
use, emotions that arise in pursuing difficult goals
and how they develop motivation to persevere with
these goals. But the world is disorderly. They also
need cognitive competencies to navigate complex
human ecological systems. How do you organize
your work and deal with the challenges to reach
your goal? If you are in Youth Action, what do you
need to learn to be able to convince the school board
to make principals follow the district’s disciplinary
code? What is the skill set?

This gets us back to our central problem of agency
in a disorderly world. The challenge is that to reach
goals in the real world there is often no roadmap;
problems are unstructured; there are obstacles and
hidden rules; heterogeneous systems are involved
(e.g., different people and institutions). According to
the ‘‘Law of Unintended Consequences,’’ you may
be trying to get to B, but end up at Z.

In school, young people are not usually taught
skills for real-world, ecological reasoning. For ex-
ample, students in most nations are taught how
governments are supposed to work, not how they
actually work or how to influence them (Hahn, 1998;
Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schultz, 2001).
Following youth’s experiences doing projects is a
way to examine what adolescents are capable of
learning and how they learn it.

What Youth Learned

We found that youth learned both basic and ad-
vanced lessons. Most youth across our 11 programs
reported learning concrete rules for organizing their
work: ‘‘start early,’’ ‘‘do a little each day,’’ ‘‘It de-
pends on effort.’’ These kinds of precepts and axioms
may be learnable by younger children. Forty percent
of the youth, however, reported learning that ap-
peared to involve the use of higher-order reasoning
to plan steps in their projects. This was more com-
mon in the leadership and activism programs (Lar-
son & Angus, 2011, in press; Larson & Hansen, 2005).

We called this higher-order learning ‘‘strategic
thinking.’’ This concept builds on research by Shirley
Heath (1998, 1999). Our systematic analysis of
youth’s reports suggested that the strategic skills
they learned had three elements. The core, defining
element was learning to think about dynamic system

5This article inevitably simplifies all the different elements that
might potentially be involved in youth’s conscious change pro-
cesses, including getting feedback that changes their self-efficacy
beliefs and numerous other thought processes or interactions that
influence their expectations, perceptions, affect, and goals (Eccles
& Roeser, 2009).

326 LARSON

processes. This included dynamics between systems
and part/whole dynamics within systems. In arts
and technology programs this involved dynamics of
unfolding plans for creating a painting, play, or other
product. In leadership and activism programs it also
involved the dynamics of people they were working
with or trying to influence. For instance, Maria at El
Concilio described learning to understand the be-
havior of different groups of adults (security guards,
commissioners, homeless people). She reported
learning ‘‘how [these] people act about being who
they are.’’ Notice that she is not simply referring to
their behavior, but their behavior as dictated by
‘‘who they are.’’

The second element of strategic thinking involved
using this dynamic systems thinking to actively
forecast or anticipate possible scenarios in their work.
They described learning to generate predictions
(i.e., hypothetical reasoning) about how a plan
might unfold. Youth in arts programs described
learning to predict how a certain painting technique
might work out. In a rural 4-H Leadership
program in which youth planned activities for chil-
dren, Becky described learning to think ahead and
‘‘visualize being a kid and what they would like.’’
Members of Youth Action learned that school board
members were impressed by dataFlike the data
they obtained from their survey of students in the
city’s schools.

The third element of strategic thinking built on the
others. Youth described learning to use this ability to
forecast dynamic events to formulate flexible strate-
gies. One young artist, Joaquin, described how be-
fore, ‘‘If I did something wrong, I erased everything
and started all over again.’’ But as a result of expe-
riences in Media Masters he learned to plan a course
for his drawings that took into account possible
contingencies, and then to monitor how his expec-
tations were working out, adjusting accordingly.
Members of Youth Action learned flexible strategies
to get students to protest rallies and how to work
with (and around) teachers and principals.

These flexible strategies included learning that
things in the real world do not always go as planned.
Youth reported learning to be prepared for Murphy’s
Law (If anything can go wrong it will): Allow extra
time, plan for more, always have a backup plan, and just
go overboard with it. John Maynard Keynes stressed
the importance of recognizing uncertainty and incor-
porating it into your planning. These teens were
learning to not disregard disorder, but to plan for it.
In sum, youth appeared to be learning to formulate
strategies based on forecasting the dynamics and
uncertainties in possible steps to reaching their goals.

They were developing executive skills for navigating
complex and unruly human ecological systems.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding was that
many youth reported transferring these strategic
executive skills to other parts of their lives: to their
schoolwork, jobs, and later, in follow-up interviews,
to navigating the unfamiliar terrain of college and
adult jobs. When Elena, from Youth Action, was in
college, she said that their experiences lobbying the
school board shaped the way she faces problems:

It definitely helped me be like, ‘‘Okay, what steps
do I need to take to change that or address this
issue that I have. . . . It helps you to be more crit-
ical and to really understand your situation and
be like, ‘Well this can work; this might not.’’’

How Youth Learned

What was the process for developing strategic think-
ing? As with learning about emotions, we could see
that leaders had important roles in supporting youth’s
learning (Larson & Angus, 2011, in press; Larson &
Walker, 2010; see also Kirshner, 2008). But youth most
often described themselvesFindividually or collec-
tivelyFas the agents of strategic learning.

There were two major themes in youth’s accounts.
One theme was that they learned from outcomes of
their actions, from how a strategy turned out. Several
said it was repeated experiences that helped them
learn. One said: ‘‘It’s kind of a different experience
every time, so I learn a little bit differently.’’ They
were learning from trial and error.

The second theme was surprising. Youth attrib-
uted their learning to processes at the front end,
before they had executed a strategy: from a process
we called ‘‘cognitive engagement with tactical chal-
lenges.’’ First, let me explain ‘‘tactical challenges.’’
Here are two examples:

� Trying to find activities we can do that will interest
3- and 4-year-olds.

� It is a self-portrait so you want to render yourself as
you are, not so much like, ‘‘This is where my nose
is,’’ but, like your character.

Tactical challenges were problems in their work
that they were trying to solve. In a quantitative
analysis, we found that youth who learned strategic
thinking described significantly more occasions of
dealing with tactical challenges in their work (Larson
& Angus, in press).

But what was the learning mechanism? Youth
described tactical challenge as the impetus for

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 327

intensive thought processes that helped build their
strategic skills. Maria from El Concilio explained
how she learned: ‘‘Like, in everything that we have
planned or every event you plan, you can have, like,
an obstacle that you need to find a way around to
finally make the event come true.’’ Indeed, Maria
had described to us many such obstacles, and part of
the strategic learning she reported was to imagine
and take into account all the different things that
might create them. At Youth Action, Miguel ex-
plained his strategic learning by reporting: ‘‘With the
board of education, when we went to the schools, we
had to analyze what was going on.’’ As with Maria,
Miguel describes learning through an analytic
thought process, in this case focused on how school
board members think.

Across programs youth described developing stra-
tegic thinking through this process of vigorously
thinking (and talking) through demands in situations
they faced: (a) analyzing their situation and anticipating
different obstacles, (b) thinking how the people in the
situation thought and acted, (c) brainstorming different
possible courses of actions, (d) generating and evalu-
ating scenarios, and (e) insights about possible dy-
namics (‘‘I figured out that . . .,’’ ‘‘I realized that . . .’’).
This process of ‘‘cognitive engagement with chal-
lenges’’ was distinct from the high motivational en-
gagement described in the prior section, but the two
went together. Blumenfeld, Kempler, and Krajcik (2006)
speculate that a high level of motivated engagement
may be a precondition for ‘‘meta-volitional’’ learning,
for example, for learning strategic executive skills.

Let me illustrate this learning process for members
of Youth Action. Over the course of their campaign,
the youth spent many sessions brainstorming, ana-
lyzing, and evaluating different possible steps to in-
fluence the school boardFdrawing on their emerging
knowledge. They followed a two-track strategy for
influencing the school board that combined private
respectful communication with board members (in-
cluding presenting data from their survey and other
sources) with public pressure through rallies and
press releases. This strategy was ultimately successful
in getting the board to actFand these strategy ses-
sions were a key (Larson & Hansen, 2005). At the same
time, these sessionsFthis cognitive engagement with
challengesFalso appeared to be critical to youth’s
learning process. They learned by thinking through
different scenarios and developing theory about po-
tential dynamics of their evolving situation and how
to navigate itFtheory that was then confirmed or
disconfirmed by outcomes of each step.

You may notice there is circularity in this expla-
nation for youth’s learning. Across programs they

appeared to learn strategic thinking by doing it. But
the critical point is the role of imagination in build-
ing on prior knowledge. Harris (2000) has argued
that reasoned imagination plays a vital role in cogni-
tive development (cf. Byrne, 2007). At each repeti-
tion, youth were using imagination as a tool to
hypothesize, guesstimate, and think through the
multisided challenges of complex situations, then to
generate plausible plans for navigating them to reach
their goal. This ‘‘front end’’ thinking was then con-
firmed or modified by the results.

So the learning process was not random trial and
error. It was a process of reasoned experimentation with
provisional theories about the dynamics of real-
world ecological contexts.

Critique

From a scientific viewpoint this is a terrible form of
learning. The youth had one or few repetitions, no
controls, and the causal variables could easily be
confounded or obscured. Real-world experiences are
‘‘rife with ambiguity’’; interpretation of evidence is
readily distorted by recency, saliency, and other bi-
ases and fallacies; and people do not seek dis-
confirmation (Byrnes, 2005). HLM this is not.

But, on the other hand, research shows that
learning is most likely to stick and be used later
when it involves personal experiences (Bjorklund,
2007). Perhaps this is because what is learned has
more meaning; it is related to goals involving
Dawes’ personal connections. Even experts in ap-
plied professionsFengineers, military commanders,
teachersFoften draw on specific episodic memories
like this to make decisions (Ross, Shafer, & Klein,
2006).

We also need to consider the skill set: strategic
thinkingFaction-oriented abilities to plan ahead
and take into account the real-world dynamics of
messy systems. What is learned is not formal prin-
ciples; it is contextual reasoning, including learning
to expect the unexpected. Learning to navigate the
real world may require some amount of direct ex-
periential learning (cf. Dewey, 1916). Although
flawed, it may be the only way to gain certain core
knowledge and skills for agency. More research is
needed.

CONCLUSIONS

My objective in this paper has been to suggest hy-
potheses about the skills youth learn for navigating a
disorderly world, skills that are increasingly impor-

328 LARSON

tant in the fluid 21st century. I want to conclude by
drawing a set of implications for the larger topic of
positive adolescent development.

But let me first emphasize limits and qualifica-
tions to what I have discussed. To begin with, this is
a theory building paper. The findings I presented are
subject to the limitations of our methods and sam-
pling (including possible self-selection effects).

I also want to emphasize that competencies for
agencyFfor pursuing goalsFare not the whole ball
game. This can be explained with one word:
Machiavelli. Bandura (2006) wrote that, ‘‘Human
agency does not come with a built in value
system’’ (p. 177). One can develop emotional man-
agement skills, motivation, and strategic thinking,
but direct them toward malevolent ends. In addition,
let me add a cultural qualification from a Hindu
sage: ‘‘Beware the black snake of doing’’ (source
unknown). My paper has been about ‘‘doing’’F
about getting from Point A to B. But some cultures
recognize that doing can be a trap or illusion. Being
is also important.

The point is that positive development has many
dimensions: ethical, interpersonal, civic, spiritual,
etc. (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Lerner et al., 2009). We
do not want teens to develop one and neglect others.
We do not want agency skills without ethics; nor are
ethics much good without agency. Indeed, achieving
the different dimensions of positive development
requires navigating tensions that can arise between
them. This heterogeneity of dimensions is yet
another form of complexity that youth need to
navigate.

I am going to close with six larger points that
bridge across different domains of positive devel-
opment. Some speak to issues with a long history.

Point 1: Even as we learn more about the biological
hardware of development, it is essential that we study the
conscious ‘‘software’’ that youth develop.

Descartes’ dualism is dead. After 500 years of the
mind – body debate, we understand that brain and
mind go hand-in-hand. But increased knowledge of
brain hardware does not eliminate the importance of
the software. As limited and imperfect as it is, the
conscious mind is at the center of human knowledge
and action (Nagel, 1986).

Adolescence is a period when the potential exists
for acquisition of greatly expanded competencies for
knowledge and action. The youth in our research
(and in research on other forms of positive devel-
opment) describe new insights, ways of thinking,
and motives that they did not previously know were
even possible. Many of these involved development
of adolescents’ new executive suite. An exciting

horizon for research is how adolescents’ acquisition
of advanced cognitive skills is interrelated with brain
integration occurring across this age period.

Point 2: We cannot understand adolescents’ develop-
ment without recognizing disorder any more than you can
have physics without recognizing friction and entropy or
biology without recognizing diversity and competition.

I am not sure these analogies quite capture it, but
hopefully you know what I mean by now. The hu-
man world is disorderly and with globalization may
be getting more disorderlyFcertainly more complex
(Larson, Wilson, & Rickman, 2009). As adolescents
come of age they encounter contradictions at every
turn. There is order, but it entails deep complexity:
nested macro- to micro ecosystems, animated by a
multitude of minds, including one’s own. Disorder
and deep complexity are intrinsic to the human
condition. The ‘‘devil in the details’’ cannot be glos-
sed over; it is part of the human ecology to which
youth need to adapt. If as a field we disregard this
disorder, we create serious blind spots.

Instead, leading scientists, from Charles Darwin
to Herbert Simon, have argued the importance of
studying the problems organisms face in interactions
with the environment as a crucial step to understand-
ing the mind (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2007). To under-
stand development, we need more naturalistic
research and interpretive analysis of the variety and
structure of challenging situations that youth en-
counter. We need to study the real-world puzzles,
paradoxes, and obstacles in different contexts of their
livesFduring adolescence and as they attempt to
move into adulthood.

Point 3: Positive adolescent development requires
knowledge and skills for navigating/dealing with/inte-
grating/balancing heterogeneity and disorder.

Many dimension of positive developmentFsuch
as maturity, resilience, leadership, and strategic
thinkingFinvolve understanding and dealing with
complex situations. Maturity involves abilities to
weigh short- and long-term costs and benefits
(Steinberg et al., 2006). Resiliency entails abilities to
adapt to adversity, loss, or conflict. I have described
above use of strategic skills that involve balancing.
The common thread is abilities to take into account
or integrate diverseFsometimes conflictingFprag-
matic, ethical, emotional, cultural, and other situa-
tional considerations. Practical intelligence entails
knowledge and skills to balance (Sternberg, 1998).
These different competencies involve capacities to
negotiate eclectic considerations, multiple goals,
different points of views, and objective – subjective
perspectives. In short, they entail navigating heter-
ogeneity and disorder. In sum, the answer to the

DEVELOPMENT IN A DISORDERLY WORLD 329

challenges posed by a complex world is a complex
mindF flexible, differentiated, eclectic, and ecolog-
icalFand with as much higher-order integration as
can be achieved.

Point 4: Adolescents are active ‘‘producers of their
development.’’

This phrase is at risk of becoming an empty slogan
unless we devote research to it. I have provided
glimpses of adolescents’ proactive processes, which
possibly apply to other development domains. These
processes include youth using their new executive
skills to analyze sequential patterns in ‘‘hot’’ emo-
tional episodes, constructing personal connections
that create meaning and motivate their engagement,
and learning not just from random trial and error but
from deliberate experimentation based on reasoned
forecasting of possible scenarios. Collaterally with
research on processes of brain development, we
should study youth’s active, conscious processes of
creating order in a disorderly world with a limited
mind.

Point 5: An individual’s positive development is sup-
ported by processes across multiple bioecological systems.

I have zeroed in on adolescents’ conscious
developmental experiences, but we need to recog-
nize all the proximal and distal bioecological systems
that support or influence these experiences. These
different systems are not just obstacles, as I may have
suggested. Richard Lerner (2002) and others describe
how many different ‘‘living systems’’ (e.g., families,
friendships, and other institutions) potentially con-
tribute to youth’s developmental processes. Other
research on positive development focuses on how
other people and the community provide supportive
conditions (Benson, Mannes, Pittman, & Feber, 2004;
Lerner et al., 2009).

To make this clear, let me describe a few of these
supportive systems most pertinent to development in
youth programs. I have already referred to how
youth’s learning often occurs with peersFit can be an
intersubjective process. Program leaders are also ex-
tremely important. Our research shows that skilled
leaders play delicate ‘‘balancing acts’’ whereby they
support youth’s experience of ownership and agency
while providing just enough structure and guidance to
keep youth (a) from being blind-sided by the worst
hits from the real world, (b) engaged with challenges
that are not too far from their skills, and (c) on track
with their work so they have outcomes to learn from
(Larson & Angus, 2011, in press; Larson & Walker,
2006, 2010). Smith, Pearson, Peck, Denault, and Sugar
(2009) describe how the supervisors of these front line
program staff also can play vital roles that help staff
sustain conditions for youth’s positive development.

For a more complete view, we need to also understand
the relation of adolescents’ experiences in programs to
their families, peers, the community, wider society,
and the brain.

Point 6: Research on development requires diverse
methods to understand all the different parts of the ele-
phant and how they are interrelated.

Since I joined the field of adolescence, quantitative
research, especially longitudinal studies, have been a
tremendous boon to our knowledge. They are abso-
lutely critical. I cannot say that enough. At the same
time, there is much about adolescents’ interactions
with a complex world that we do not know how to
measure as linear variablesFand may never be able
to measure. However, the fact that something cannot
be measured as a variable is a poor (even irresponsible)
reason to exclude it from study. Many key elements of
adolescents’ development are human construc-
tionsFrelationships, culture, meaning, ecological
systemsFand thus are inevitably polyglots. Measures
of these constructs may provide helpful tools, but for
some phenomena they capture just one limited part
of a much more complex elephant.

Likewise, statistical analysis and modeling are
critical to our field, and one could form an endless list
of all that they have helped us to learn, which could not
have been learned without them. Iatrogenic effects leap to
mind as a dramatic example (Dodge, Lansford, &
Dishion, 2006). At the same time, competencies or
processes that involve balancing, integrating, or rec-
onciling complexity do not lend themselves to being
easily modeled with equationsFthat is, unless you
have really good measures of underlying con-
structsFlike economists do, but that is where I star-
ted. The point is, we need diverse research tools,
including rigorous quantitative, qualitative, experi-
mental, ethnographic, interpretive, and mixed meth-
ods research to seek a more complete picture of the
different systems and how they interrelate.

To conclude, I have tried to make two central
points. First, the developmental challenges of adoles-
cenceFof coming of age in a disorderly worldFare
enormous. These challenges need more recognition
and research. Second, despite the numerous limi-
tations of the human mind, adolescents have large
potentials. We have an important role in better un-
derstanding these potentials and how they develop as
well as how to better support their development.

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