CAREER: Developing and Testing the Integrated Youth Development Model Framework for the Future of Juvenile Justice Scholarship, Education, and Practice

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In the United States, we have a separate juvenile justice system because policymakers, practitioners, and researchers believe that children are fundamentally different from adults in ways that requires different treatment under the law. Specifically, we believe they are more amenable to treatment, intervention, and rehabilitation. Indeed, when they receive the proper supports and resources, children are remarkably resilient. However, the juvenile justice field typically focuses on compliance and control rather than promoting positive growth and helping youth reach their potential. To advance the health, prosperity, and welfare of justice-involved youth and move the field into the future, juvenile justice system policymakers, practitioners, and researchers need a guiding framework that illuminates how interdisciplinary approaches can be integrated to promote youth thriving and a structured set of tools and approaches that can test the framework. We need a model framework for organizing and guiding the field, new tools for measuring youths’ success rather than just their deficits and recidivism, and a model program that can be replicated easily in other jurisdictions to promote youth success. This project consists of an integrated research, education, and implementation plan devoted to developing and testing the Integrated Youth Development Model (IYDM), a novel theoretical framework that demonstrates how interdisciplinary approaches can be integrated and distilled into a workable set of core tenets that promotes thriving among justice-involved youth. Specifically, the CAREER project has four objectives: (1) Develop the IYDM, which leverages social ecology, positive youth development, youth empowerment, and learning science, to promote positive youth outcomes; (2) Construct and test a “Positive Change Center Tool” for jurisdictions to assess current practices and perspectives on IYDM-informed principles; (3) Systematically test elements of the IYDM and positively impact JJS-involved youth; and (4) Engage university students, youth, and their parents in learning and participatory action research. In doing so, the investigator will create tools that assess how much jurisdictions engage in positive youth change, as well as enable jurisdictions to shift from assessing recidivism as the sole outcome to using new tools that assess their impacts on positive outcomes. Both quantitative/experimental and participatory action research methodologies will be used, and the studies will take place within one of the nation’s largest juvenile justice systems. Altogether, the project will yield a new, empirically supported, sustainable, and replicable path forward for juvenile justice scholarship, education, and practice focused on promoting learning and growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.