Chapter 1: Adolescent Development from an Agentic Perspective

Different periods of life present certain prototypic challenges and competency demands for successful functioning. Changing aspirations, time perspectives, and societal systems over the course of the life span alter how people structure, regulate, and evaluate their lives. Psychosocial changes with age do not represent lock-step stages through which everyone must inevitably pass as part of a preordained developmental sequence. There are many pathways through life and, at any given period, people vary substantially in how successfully they manage their lives in the milieus in which they are immersed. The beliefs they hold about their capabilities to produce results by their actions are an influential personal resource in negotiating their lives through the life cycle.