Middle School Youths as Problem-Solvers

City Year has embarked upon research to learn how to maximize its capacity to promote the development of real-world problem solving through its Young Heroes program. Young Heroes engages about one thousand middle school young people across the country each year in a five-month Saturday program of community issues education and hands-on community service. The study focuses on middle school youths because this is when young people begin to develop abstract cognitive capacities. The qualitative study presented here includes a taxonomy of strategies suggested by 91 middle school young people for changing things they wish were different in their schools and communities.