Chapter One

1
Part I
Chapter One

• Introduction

Defining Development Five Characteristics of
Development Developmental Study as a
Science Cautions from Science
2
7 Stages of Development

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.
• 6.
• 7.

3
Defining Development

• The science of human development seeks to
  understand how and why peopleall kinds of
  people, everywherechange or remain the same over
  time.
• There are 3 crucial elements.

4
1. Science

• developmental study is a science.
• theories
• data
• analysis
• critical thinking
• sound methodology

5
2. Diversity

• studying all kinds of people

6
3. Connections Between Change and Time

• Changing or remaining the same over time
• transformations
• consistencies of human life
• beginning to end
• understanding each segment of life

7
Dynamic Systems Theory

• stresses the fluctuations and transitions
• the dynamic synthesis of multiple levels of
  analysis
• the interaction between people and within each
  person
• parent and child
• prenatal and postnatal life
• between ages 2 and 102

8
Bioecological Systems

• Urie Bronfenbrenner
• a leader in understanding ecological systems
  approach
• he believed that developmentalists need to
  examine all systems surrounding the development
  of each person
• microsysems
• exosystems
• macrosystems

9
The Ecological Model

• Microsysems
• Exosystems
• Macrosystems

10
Five Characteristics of Development

• developmentalists are acutely aware of the
  reciprocal connections between one moment in life
  and another leading to five principles that are
  useful for understanding any age of human life

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Multidirectional (1)

• Each aspect of life is multidirectional

12
Gains and Losses
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Multidirectional Physical Growth

• Growth in height and weight is not linear
• Fluctuations in body weight are affected by many
  other changes
• appetite, nutrition, family, stress, exercise,
  culture, food supply, and climate
• historical changes can have powerful effects
• obesity epidemic in the U.S. today

14
Multidirectional Effects, Large and Small

• Butterfly effect
• Opposite Idea
• Family Dynamics
• influence vulnerability or resiliency
• strong bond with loving caregiver can protect
  against adversity of many kinds

15
Multicontextual (2)

• humans develop in dozens of contexts that
  profoundly affect their development
• Social context

16
Multicontextual The Historical Context

• Cohort
• these people are affected by the same
• values
• events
• technologies
• Culture

17
Multicontextual The Socioeconomic Context

• Socioeconomic includes

18
Multicultural (4)

• culture affects each human at every moment
  culture is so pervasive, people rarely notice
  their culture while they are immersed in it

19
Multicultual

• Culture
• set of values, assumptions, and customs as well
  as physical objects such as clothing, housing,
  etc.
• includes all decisions people make
• is dynamic, supportive

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Multicultural Ethnicity, Race, and Income

• ethnic groups
• share certain attributes
• ancestral heritage
• national origin
• religion
• culture
• language
• ethnic categories arise from history, sociology,
  and psychology, not from biology

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• Race
• a distorted concept, no clear-cut racial groups

22

• The quality of parenting is the single most
  important predictor of a resilient child, which
  is a child who can overcome many hardships.

23
Multidisciplinary (4)

• a broad array of disciplines and cross-cutting
  topics each person develops simultaneously in
  body, mind, and spirit
• Development is divided into three domains

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Plasticity (5)

• The possibility to change
• human traits can be molded
• yet maintaining durability of identity
• culture and upbringing affect both aspects of
  plasticity
• Genes and other biological influences
• provides hope and realism
• hope
• realism

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The Person Within the Context

• each person has unique genes and experiences
• We need to keep in mind that the future is not
  something we simply enter, the future is also
  something we help create.
• Paul Baltes (Founder of lifespan developmental
  study)

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• .

• Ted Kaczynski The intellectual Ted Kaczynski
  sprinted through high school, not bothering with
  his junior year and making only passing efforts
  at social contact. Off to Harvard at age 16, Ted
  was a loner during his college years. One of his
  roommates at Harvard said that Ted had a special
  way of avoiding people by quickly shuffling by
  them and slamming the door behind him. After
  obtaining his Ph.D. in mathematics at the
  University of Michigan, Kaczynski became a
  professor at the University of California at
  Berkeley. His colleagues there remember him as
  hiding from social circumstancesno friends, no
  allies, no networking. After several years at
  Berkeley, Kaczynski resigned and moved to a rural
  area of Montana where he lived as a hermit in a
  crude shack for 25 years. Town residents
  described him as a bearded eccentric. Ted traced
  his own difficulties to growing up as a genius in
  a kids body and sticking out like a sore thumb
  in his surroundings as a child. In 1996, he was
  arrested and charged with being the notorious
  Unabomber, Americas most wanted killer who sent
  sixteen mail bombs in 17 years that left 23
  people wounded and maimed and 3 people dead. In
  1998, he plead guilty to the offenses and was
  sentenced to life in prison.

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Alice Walker A decade before Kaczynski
allegedly mailed his first bomb, Alice Walker,
who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for her book
The Color Purple, spent her days battling racism
in Mississippi. She had recently won her first
writing fellowship, but rather than use the money
to follow her dream of moving to Africa, she put
herself into the heart and heat of the civil
rights movement. Walker grew up knowing the
brutal effects of poverty and racism. Born in
1944, who was the eighth child of Georgia
sharecroppers who earned 300 a year. When
Walker was 8, her brother accidentally shot her
in the left eye with a BB gun. By the time her
parents got her to the hospital a week later
(they had not car), she was blind in that eye and
it had developed a disfiguring layer of scar
tissue. Despite the counts against her, Walker
went on to become an essayist, a poet, an
award-winning novelist, a short-story writer, and
a social activist who, like her characters, has
overcome pain and anger