Klaus Hurrelmann is Senior Professor of Public Health and Education at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. He established the Interdisciplinary Research Centre Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Youth and was also co-founder of the Centre for Childhood and Youth Research in Bielefeld. Gudrun Quenzel is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Education in Vorarlberg. Her research focuses on youth and socialisation as well as education poverty, education inequality, and health. She serves together with Klaus Hurrelmann on the management team of the German Shell Youth Studies.

• Preface Chapter 1: Adolescence as a Life Stage Chapter 2: Personality Development in Adolescence Chapter 3: Adolescents as Productive Processors of RealityChapter 4: The Developmental Task QualifyingChapter 5: The Developmental Task Bonding Chapter 6: The Developmental Task ConsumptionChapter 7: The Developmental Task ParticipationChapter 8: Problems in Coping with Developmental Tasks Bibliography

The authors take an inter-disciplinary approach to describe the developmental tasks young people face in present-day Western societies, and how mastering them – or not – has repercussions for the rest of their lives. Development is not seen as an "unfolding" of personality, but as an active process, in which internal and external factors interact. With its highly structured content, the book becomes a kind of magnet that could attract social scientists, and those from other disciplines, towards better cohesive, collaborative, future action.Dr. paed. Marion Kloep, Professor Glamorgan University, Wales (retired)Leo B. Hendry, PhD, DLitt., FBPS, Emeritus Professor, University of Aberdeen, Scotland