Adolescent Development – Term Paper Assignment
DUE: April 23
Choose a book targeted for adolescents or emerging adults. For example, “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” by Judy Blume (or many other books by Judy Blume). Alternately, you might want to look at several episodes of a television show that focuses on adolescents/emerging adults. Examples would be “The Wonder Years”, “My So-Called-Life”, “Freaks & Geeks” “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” etc. A movie might work too, but you might find it difficult to find enough material to cover in a movie (though if you can think of a great movie which gives you enough to cover, go for it!), which is why I suggested a book or several episodes of television shows. You should relate topics in the book/movie/TV show back to topics in Adolescent Development we have or will cover in the class (feel free to look ahead in the book). For example, how is the way the character is thinking demonstrative of adolescent egocentrism and the personal fable? Is the character exhibiting formal operational thought? How is timing of puberty affecting the character? What is the character’s relationship like with their peers and how is this typical (or not) of adolescents? What are some influences of culture you can see on the character and their development? These are just a few out of potentially hundreds of questions that you can answer. Feel free to cover a multitude of different topics. Your paper should be approximately 5 pages (4 at a bare minimum) long, double spaced, 12 point, times new roman font, one inch margins. You do not need a cover page. Your reference list (which might just be the textbook and your book/movie/TV show – that’s fine) should be in APA format. Please DO NOT spend the majority of the paper summarizing the book/movie/show. I am not looking for a synopsis, but rather your ability to recognize examples of topics we cover in this class and describe how they apply to these fictional adolescent/emerging adults.
Paper will be graded on
Writing: 30%
Thanks for any help anybody can give me, also +k