There also is a need to reflect on the purpose in isolating such phenomena for special consideration. Presumably such a focus facilitates a clear understanding of the unique aspects of school problems that are not generalizable to other students in other developmental periods. For example, the consideration of adolescent drug use or adolescent pregnancy suggests that there is something unique about adolescence in relation to these problems. Although sexual activity is likely to begin in adolescence and drug use intensifies during the teen years, the clinician who focuses too narrowly on that period is apt to not fully realize the similarities and differences in such behaviors across developmental periods.

Adolescence can also be viewed from a social psychological, psychodynamic, evolutionary, cognitive, or normative perspective. Examining adolescence in different cultures adds still another perspective and leads to the realization that there are different paths from childhood to adulthood. Further, within the period of adolescence, it is possible to postulate subperiods corresponding to early adolescence (12–15 years) and late adolescence (15–18 years). Such a breakdown has some arbitrariness, but it is useful because it permits positing important developmental and secondary school events on a scale of time. For example, early adolescence is a crucial period of cognitive, psychosexual, and affective development (see Block, 1971; Blos, 1979; Gholson & Rosenthal, 1984). Gender differences also appear to be important in these developmental sequences (see Compas & Wagner, 1991; Rutter, 1980). For example, adolescent boys with psychological difficulties are likely to have problems in childhood; girls, in contrast, are more likely to manifest psychological difficulties in adolescence.

The young person passes through a series of chained options that give direction to outcome. At many points, new experiences, feedback, or exposure to new role models may redirect the teenager's development. Secondary school experiences are important in this general developmental model, as, for example, when the adolescent who establishes a pattern of high achievement in secondary school then has the option of pursuing higher education. This further schooling, in turn, allows for the possibility of certain careers that then have personal, economic, lifestyle, and cultural implications. . .

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