Towards a decolonial developmental science: Adolescent development in the Majority World taking center stage

Abstract

While aspiring to be a diverse and global science, developmental science continues to be dominated by EuroAmerican epistemologies, researchers, and communities in its published scholarship. Adolescents in communities across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America comprise 85% of the world's adolescent population, and yet their experiences and perspectives are marginalized in our science. Adolescents in the Majority World live in highly diverse social, cultural, political, economic, educational and healthcare contexts that contribute to their development, and we have much to learn from their experiences. This article situates the marginalization of the global majority within coloniality embedded in developmental science. The article describes the impetus for this special issue Towards a decolonial developmental science and the process of putting it together, along with providing an overview of the 18 articles in this collection that push us towards decoloniality. The special issue serves as a call to transform developmental science to be decolonial by empowering adolescent development in Majority World communities to take center stage. Adolescent development research from Majority World communities has the potential to challenge the knowledge base generated from Minority World samples, contributing to a science that is comprehensive, inclusive, and can inform prevention and intervention efforts to support the well‐being of adolescents globally.

Increased Performance in Tutoring Systems During COVID-19 in Uruguay

“…At the same time, it is a major contribution of our study to generalize previous findings derived in Minority World countries to a country and cultural context from the Majority World-Uruguay-for the first time. A substantial majority of adolescents, around 85%, reside in Majority World countries (e.g., Abubakar et al, 2024;UNICEF, 2023); yet, research on ITS, in general, and on ITS usage during COVID-19, in particular, has centered on the Minority World. This is problematic as it reinforces (implicit) biases in that developments observed in Minority World samples are perceived as the norm, thus marginalizing the experiences of students from Majority World contexts (Abubakar et al, 2024;Draper et al, 2023).…”

“…A substantial majority of adolescents, around 85%, reside in Majority World countries (e.g., Abubakar et al, 2024;UNICEF, 2023); yet, research on ITS, in general, and on ITS usage during COVID-19, in particular, has centered on the Minority World. This is problematic as it reinforces (implicit) biases in that developments observed in Minority World samples are perceived as the norm, thus marginalizing the experiences of students from Majority World contexts (Abubakar et al, 2024;Draper et al, 2023). Our study, which directly tested the same research questions relying on the same ITS system in Uruguay and Germany, serves as a step towards a science of digital learning that is more diverse, comprehensive, and globally applicable (see also e.g., Raval et al, 2024).…”