California Department of Education Taking Center Stage – Act II
The field of youth development focuses on research about
protective factors that build students’ strengths and protect
them from social, emotional, and physical harm. Youth
development shifts the focus from fixing negative behaviors to
building youths’ strengths and capacity, their resilience, or
assets. The Search Institute identified 40 developmental assets
as building blocks of healthy development. The list of assets
contains both external and internal assets that families and
schools can nurture to help students succeed. To view the list,
go to the Search Institute (Outside Source) Web page on assets.
Resilience research identified three principles that protect
students from risk and help them succeed:1 "These supports and
opportunities, referred to as protective factors, have been
linked to the development of resilience—broadly defined as the
ability to rebound from adversity and achieve healthy
development and successful learning. They shou