Thinking Culturally About Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood
Learn how to help students think culturally about development in adolescence and emerging adulthood, emphasizing the importance of understanding cultural context in modern times.
Lene Arnett Jensen, Senior Research Scientist, Clark University
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Senior Research Scholar, Clark University
Adolescence (ages 10-17) and emerging adulthood (ages 18-29) are fascinating and eventful times of life, and how young people experience them varies vastly according to cultural context. The focus of this presentation will be on ways to encourage students to think culturally about development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Attention to the cultural context of development is more important than ever for students to understand, because they will experience their futures in a world with unprecedented levels of migration and immigration, international travel, global economic connections, and culturally diverse international media. This presentation is intended to be relevant to both novice and experienced instructors who wish to learn more about how to teach effectively about the cultural contexts of development.
About the speakers
Lene Arnett Jensen, Senior Research Scientist, Clark University
Lene Arnett Jensen is a senior research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1994 from the University of Chicago and did a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to Clark University, she taught at the University of Missouri and Catholic University of America. She has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Shenzhen University in China, Aalborg University in Denmark, Maharaja Sayajirao University in India and the University of Bordeaux in France. She has taught courses on developmental psychology for more than 30 years.
As the originator of the “cultural-developmental approach” to theory and research, she aims to move the discipline of psychology toward understanding development both in terms of what is universal and what is cultural. Her publications include Immigrant Civic Engagement: New Translations (2008, Taylor-Francis), Bridging Cultural and Developmental Psychology: New Syntheses for Theory, Research and Policy (2011, Oxford University Press), the Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture (2015, Oxford University Press), Moral Development in a Global World: Research from a Cultural-Developmental Perspective (2015, Cambridge University Press), and the Oxford Handbook of Moral Development (2020, Oxford University Press). From 2004 to 2015, she was editor-in-chief for the journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (with Reed Larson). She served as program chair for the 2012 biennial conference of the Society for Research on Adolescence (with Xinyin Chen) and currently serves on the boards of several journals. For more information, visit her website.
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Senior Research Scholar, Clark University
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a senior research scholar in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1986 from the University of Virginia and did 3 years of postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. From 1992 through 1998, he was an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri. In the fall of 2005, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; from 2010 to 2011, he was the Nehru Chair at Maharaja Sayajirao University in India; and from 2017 to 2018, he was a visiting professor at the University of Bordeaux in France.
His primary scholarly interest for the past 20 years has been in emerging adulthood. He coined the term, and he has conducted research on emerging adults concerning a wide variety of topics and involving several different ethnic groups in American society. He is the founding president and executive director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA). From 2005 to 2014, he was the editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research (JAR), and currently he is on the editorial board of JAR and 5 other journals. He has published many theoretical and research papers on emerging adulthood in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties (2024, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press), among many others. For more information, visit his website.