Colette Daiute
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Social Development

My approach to studying social development is consistent with socio-cultural activity theory. In several studies in the United States and internationally, I have, for example, studied how children and adolescents understand conflict and their role in social relations as part of the broader political environment where they live.

Research on Conflict in U.S. Public Schools

See the following citations on research with children making sense of ethnic conflict in the context of violence prevention programs.

Daiute, C. (2006). Stories of conflict and development in U.S. public schools. In C. Daiute, Z.
Beykont, Z., C. Higson-Smith, & L. Nucci (Eds.).  International Perspectives on Youth Conflict and Development (pp. 207 – 224). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Daiute, C., Stern, R., & Lelutiu-Weinberger, C. (2003).  Negotiating violence prevention.  Journal of
Social Issues, 59, 83 – 101.

Daiute, C., & Buteau, E. (2002). Writing for their lives: Children’s narrative supports for physical and psychological well-being. In S.J. Lepore & J.M. Smythe (Eds.) The writing cure: How expressive writing promotes health and emotional well-being (pp. 53 – 73). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Daiute, C., Buteau, E., & Rawlins, C. (2001). Social relational wisdom: Developmental diversity in
children’s written narratives about social conflict.  Narrative Inquiry, 11(2), 1 – 30.

International Research on Youth Conflict and Development
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Photo of Colette Colette Daiute's recent work with her student, Maja Turniski "explains how socio-historical discourse perspective can expand research on the psycho-social effects on war. Drawing on a study of stories of conflict by children in post-war Croatia, they propose the concept "trans-generational development" to account for the legacies of war on social identity and knowledge. The focus of the analysis is 59 narratives written by 10 to 17 year olds identifying as Serb and Croat in the context of their participation in community center devoted to post-war recovery and development. The analysis identified complexity in young authors' representations of social relations across generations, especially Photo of Colette

around issues of ethnicity - a major issue fueling the 1990's wars in the former Yugoslavia. For example, the young authors characterized their parents' generation as divided, bitter, and socially impotent, their own generation as collaborative, wise, and resourceful, and future townspeople as active in the face of political and economic challenges. These patterns suggest how young people express identities and knowledge of the war period, yet, with support, also reason beyond the ideological and emotional legacies of war. Such story-telling diversity underscores the need for complex conceptualizations and applications of narrative theory to research and practice in war and other troubled settings" (Daiute & Turniski, 2005, p. 217).

Daiute, C., & Turniski, M. (2005). Young people's stories of conflict in post-war Croatia. Narrative Inquiry, 15(2), 217-239.