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Ideals and human development -- Evolution and the emergence of liberty -- Social relationships and human development -- Developmental theory as a frame for understanding liberty -- On the nature of thriving -- Programs promoting positive youth development and civil society -- Policies promoting positive youth development and civil society

Youth development researchers and practitioners have the common goal of understanding and enhancing the positive development of all young people. The work of Professors Mary Arnold and Ryan Gagnon on the 4-H Thriving Model provides a creative and richly theoretically and empirically informed vision for promoting positive youth development (PYD) through integrating youth development research and practice. Their vision is an exemplar of how theoretically predicated and cutting-edge developmental science and the enactment of youth programs can be mutually informative. Drawing on the theory, research, and ideas for program design encompassed within the Science of Learning and Development (SoLD) Alliance, which applies developmental scholarship that integrates research from multiple disciplines and underscores the malleability, agency, and specificity of mutually influential coactions between youth and their contexts, Professors Arnold and Gagnon illustrate the features of researchópractice integration that must be enacted for innovative progress in programs aimed at enhancing youth thriving. The compelling roadmap for promoting PYD through the integrations framed by the 4-H Thriving Model will advance youth development practice, developmental science theory and research and, most important, the lives of the diverse young people of our nation.

The field of youth development sits at the frontier of new opportunities for research and practice. These opportunities are enabled by innovations in theory and in theory-inspired research methods. Framed by relational developmental systems metatheory, dynamic systems models of youth development emphasize that every young person has the potential to change positively by aligning specific individual strengths and contextual resources that, together, can optimize the life paths of a young person. The methods linked to these theoretical models combine to help identify the specific links between an individual and his or her context that may maximize thriving across the adolescent decade. The evidence derived from theory-predicated use of these methods may be used to create innovations in youth development programs and policies that promote lives of personal thriving and social contribution among the diverse young people of our world.