I. Context of the Project - Filipino Youth

In his article, Theories of Adolescence, Michael Berzonsky outlines some of the studies that have been made on the period in one’s life called adolescence. He says that although the academic discipline of adolescent psychology originated in the 20th century, scholars have already been making distinctions among children, youth and adults before the modern era (2000). Aristotle defined youth adulthood from puberty to age 21 and viewed adolescents as being “impulsive, moody and controlled by their passions” (cited in Berzonsky, 2000).

Erik Erikson identified eight life-span stages that a person goes through, each stage assumed to build upon one another in a cumulative manner. Stage 5, Identity and Diffusion, refers to adolescence, “the stage when adolescents actively attempt to integrate their experiences in an attempt to construct a stable sense of personal identity” (cited in Berzonsky, 2000). Erikson emphasizes that adolescents need to be able to see themselves as products of their previous experiences. He said that positive resolutions of prior crises aid the process of identity formation while previous failures may lead to identity diffusion.

Robert J. Havighurst defined six developmental stages a person goes through, defining adolescence from age 13 to 18 years old and identifies the following as the developmental tasks of this stage:
· Achieving new and more mature relations with age mates of both sexes.
· Achieving a masculine or feminine social role.
· Accepting one’s physique and using the body effectively.
· Achieving emotional independence of parents and other adults.
· Preparing for marriage and family life.
· Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behavior.
· Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior.

Jean Piaget, on the other hand, viewed adolescents as perceptive individuals “actively attempting to construct an understanding of their world” (cited in Berzonsky, 2000). He cites cognition and intellectual ability as a means by which adolescents deal with everyday life and cognitive developments ensues through four different stages: the sensori-motor stage, preoperational stage, concrete-operational stage and formal-operational stage. The formal operational stage happens during adolescence and it is the stage which brings cognition to its final form. Formal operational thinkers do not stop at describing what has occurred, but attempts to explain why things happened; they think in terms of the broader realm of hypothetical possibilities. It is at this stage that adolescents engage in “hypothetical-deductive reasoning in order to test and verify the possible explanations or hypotheses they generate” (cited in Berzosky, 2000).

Granville Stanley Hall, acknowledged father of adolescent psychology, identified many major dimensions of adolescent development and put major emphasis on the hypothesis that “adolescence was universally an extraordinarily turbulent and stressful period of life” (cited in Berzonsky, 2000).

Adolescence is often defined as a time of many transitions, being that time between childhood and adulthood. Natividad and Puyat identifies these transitions as physical changes, cognitive development, moral reasoning and values formation and are concerned that, due to rapid socioeconomic and cultural change, the Filipino youth may not accomplish successful transition into “stable and productive adult status” (2004).