Not a Stage! is written for teachers students and scholars interested in the academic social
and emotional needs of young adolescents. It is unique because it actively resists basing the
practice research and theory of young adolescent education on developmentalism and the
developmental stage of young adolescence. The purpose of this book is to begin to reorient the
discourse on young adolescent growth and change and in turn reconceptualize the education of
young adolescents. The book infuses a contingent recursive conception of adolescent growth and
change into the discourse around young adolescence by making three pleas to those interested in
the schooling of young adolescents: to move away from a developmentally responsive vision to a
contingently and recursively relational vision to move from «characterizing» young adolescenCE
to «particularizing» young adolescenTS and to move from a «sameness» curriculum to a
«difference» curriculum.
