Welcome to my course objectives page.  Your knowledge of the course objectives will be assessed
via the good faith papers and three examinations (see course
syllabus regarding these methods).  After taking this course, you should be able to:

1)  Understand the role of theories in explaining adolescent development including
psychoanalytic, sociocultural, cognitive-behavioral, and contextual approaches.

2) Understand the concept of "adolescence", and ages that define the stages of this
period of development.

3) Appreicate the diversity of disciplines—psychology, sociology, medicine, education, and
ethology—that contribute to the field.

4) Appreciate the ethical issues adolescent researchers encounter when working with this
population and "touchy" topics (e.g., puberty, sexuality, peer social competence).

5) Describe different research methods (e.g., event sampling, observational methods) and
developmental designs (e.g., cross-sectional/longitudinal) adolescent experts use.

6) Understand the difficulties in establishing strong conclusions about adolescent
development and how study results are sometimes hard to generalize to the
larger population.

7) Describe how applied professionals (e.g., educators, clinicians) use research in this
area to guide interventions.

8) Understand how research findings and theory (e.g., information processing theory) apply
to everyday life (e.g., processing information).

9) Apply theory/research to everyday life in the good faith papers, for example, how
attachment theory might predict student behavior in classroom settings.

10) Appreciate the value of research in guiding theory development and practice.

11) Understand how adolescent behavior and development may be influenced by communities,
ethnicity, and culture.

12) Appreciate how different contexts (e.g., family, peers, media) influence development.

13) Know the major psychosocial outcomes of adolescent development.