Taking a developmental contextualist perspective, and with a focus on social class, ethnicity and gender, this impressive collection explores how research on adolescent psychosocial development has unfolded from the 1970s to the present.

The contributors examine such topics as: autonomy in adolescence and the detachment debate, sexuality from trends in gender sexual scripts to sexual offences such as date rape, intimacy from individual differences to interpersonal situations, achievement from the school or workplace to social settings, identity, including the role of culture, cognitive behaviours, including education for and constraints on critical thinking, and the interplay of biological and psychological processes.