Motivating Discouraged Youth in Times of Social Change

Abstract

This chapter presents the rationale and initial planning of a program designed to promote optimal human functioning in discouraged youth attending the 9th grade in a public school in Portugal. Such program can be of utmost relevance as students have to make important educational decisions in the transition from the 9th to the 10th grade. The underlying approach is based on the “Thriving with Social Purpose” (TSP) framework that was developed by M. E. Ford and Smith, inspired on Donald Ford’s Living System Framework, which is a holistic and integrative meta-model of behavior and person-in-context functioning.