Theories of Human Development

A Comparative Approach

Michael G. Green, John A. Piel

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317343189
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The authors have grouped the theories into three classical "families" which differ in their views relative to the prime motives underlying human nature. They show how theories are specific examples of more general points of view called paradigms. The theories chosen to represent the three paradigms (the Endogenous Paradigm, Exogenous Paradigm, and the Constructivist Paradigm) were selected because they met four criteria:

• importance, as judged by academic and research psychologists
• fertility, as judged by the amount of research the theory has generated
• scope, as judged by the variety of phenomena the various theories explain
• family resemblance, as judged by how well each theory represents its paradigm

The authors present the "paradigm case" in the lead chapter for each paradigm. This paradigm case is the "best example" for the paradigm. The authors explain why paradigm cases are important, and give them more detailed treatment than other theories in the same paradigm.

PART ONE
Preliminary Considerations

The study of theories of development requires some familiarity with the general nature of problems, issues, and concerns we encounter in trying to explain human nature. These preliminary considerations are introduced in this section. Many of the major organizing principles used throughout the text are found here.

Developmental psychology today is a fractured mosaic. Sometimes it seems like there are almost as many theories as there are things to explain. Developmental psychology, like many other sciences, has become so specialized that few people have a sense of the geography. What is the big picture? What are the landmarks? How are developmental theories organized? What are the recognizable themes that relate one theory to another? Few modern treatments of developmental theories attempt to answer these questions. We do.

In Chapter 1 we tell you why the study of developmental theories is important. We understand that the reader may be fulfilling a course requirement or an elective, but either way, readers are entitled to know why they should study theories. We answer that question with five fundamental reasons for studying developmental theories. We also tell you what a theory is and outline the structural components common to all developmental theories; these will be used throughout the chapters for comparing individual theories with one another. Finally, we sketch the three major philosophical movements from which modern “families” of developmental theories originated.

In Chapter 2 we address the question “How good is a theory?” This is the “so what?” question. To answer it, we describe three robust sets of evaluative criteria used throughout the text to assess a theory’s value or worth. These criteria represent (1) the values of science—elements of scientific worthiness, (2) characteristics of development—viewed as developmental adequacy, and (3) elements important to determining pedagogical usefulness. Throughout the text these sets of criteria will be used to systematically evaluate each theory. Such evaluations are useful in their own right because they reveal some of a theory’s strengths and weaknesses, but they can also be used to make systematic comparisons between different theories, a major focus of this text.

CHAPTER
1	Theories as Windows for Looking to See

Preview Questions

■ Why is it important to study theories of human development?

■ What is a theory?

■ What are the structural components of a developmental theory?

■ Why do theories have jargon?

■ How did developmental paradigms originate in philosophy?

■ What are the major developmental paradigms, and how do they differ?

Why do We Study Theories?

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced “purse”), a major architect of American pragmatic philosophy, is credited with the saying that there is nothing more practical than a good theory (Lincourt, personal communication, 1986). Theories are useful because they attempt to explain things that cannot explain themselves. Many important questions about human nature ultimately require theories rather than facts for answers. For example, why do people remember nothing from their own infant years? Why do infants form attachment bonds? What is the function of play, for both children and adults? Given such wide variation in childhood experiences, why does language develop so uniformly in so many tongues between the ages of two and five?

Theories attempt to answer these and many other questions about human nature and its development. In fact, theories are the hallmark of science. Their importance is so fundamental that they are often a primary focus of the scientific enterprise.

Why do we study theories of human development? Five basic principles comprise an answer to this fundamental question and help us understand why developmental psychologists spend so much time studying, testing, and creating theories. Collectively, these principles imply that any systematic explanation of human development must be preceded by an examination of its theories.

Principle 1 —Theories Explain What Facts Mean

The fundamental purpose of all theories is to explain facts. Facts cannot explain themselves. They do not organize themselves for our review, and they have no automatic force that indelibly stamps our minds with their meaning. Royce (1975) makes this point directly when he notes that theories are crucial to the conduct of science because facts can mean different things in different theoretical contexts. Theories organize and interpret facts differently, each according to its own principles.

It is a well-known fact, for example, that children around the world acquire the rudimentary grammar of their native tongue, no matter what that tongue might be, between approximately 2 and 5 years of age. While that fact is indisputable, its interpretation is not. Some theorists contend that biological maturation controls language acquisition. Others argue that language acquisition is a product of learning. While the facts of language acquisition are seldom debated, decisions about which body of facts and its theoretical interpretation are hotly contested. Facts cannot identify their own causes; that is the role of theory.

Theories shape the collection, interpretation, and meaning of facts, but theories and facts are interdependent. Scientific advancement requires both information and its explanation. While bad theories are sometimes doomed because they fail to explain data, others are doomed simply because they explain facts later held to be irrelevant for new scientific interests. Moreover, the entire history of scientific ideas marks a trend away from concrete, physical concepts toward more abstract theories in large part because concrete concepts explain only specific phenomena, whereas more abstract theories explain diverse and general phenomena. As researchers collect more and more facts about human development, theories have become increasingly indispensable in organizing and interpreting them. As a general rule, theories make facts important, not the other way around.

Principle 2 —Theories Represent Public Knowledge

It is human nature to try and explain why others behave the way they do, and we all do this by inferring underlying causes and motives for other people’s behavior. But when we do that, we invariably rely on either public or private sources of knowledge. Public knowledge is available to everyone and is often found in books and journal articles. This knowledge is easily accessible, readily transferred from one location to another or from one person to another, and openly discussed, examined, researched, criticized, and amended. Theories represent public knowledge and are thus submitted to public scrutiny and debate.

Private knowledge, on the other hand, is only available to individuals, and private knowledge is hardly a defensible approach to explaining the behavior of others. It is inaccessible, difficult to communicate to others, and, worst of all, not subjected to public scrutiny. This type of knowledge consists of our own personal experiences, ideas, habits, beliefs, and opinions, none of which typically get subjected to correction. We often explain others’ motivations and actions in terms of our own experiences, attitudes, and memories, and these explanations often have a self-satisfying though unexamined quality about them. While some people still prefer the ease of conjuring up explanations about “Why Johnny can’t read,” such explanations are generally less reliable and less valid than those that arise through the careful scrutiny of informed debate or theory testing. The absence of reliability can be found in the inconsistency of personal explanations (e.g., “Johnny can’t read because his parents don’t make him do homework”; “He doesn’t know math because he hasn’t applied himself”; “He doesn’t know how to spell because his teachers didn’t use phonics.”). Ironically, explanations that rely on personal experience are often simply untrue. What is worse, many times we can’t tell if those explanations are untrue or not.

One of the authors once helped a teacher conduct some simple classroom observations because of her frequent and ardent complaints about how handicapped students were so disruptive in her classroom. After several weeks of data collection, the teacher reported back some insightful news. It turned out that nearly all the class disruptions were produced by her normal, nonhandicapped students through comments about or directed at the handicapped students. Her belief that handicapped students were disruptive was so strong that it had influenced not only what she saw but also how she saw it.

The lesson here is that because theories represent public rather than private knowledge, they tend to explain human nature in a less biased, more defensible way. And because they are public, we have the next principle.

Principle 3 —Theories Are, in Principle, Testable

Theories make various claims about human nature that can, in principle, be tested separately or in combination. Testability provides an element of self-correction for theories not found in private knowledge. A single experiment may at any time disprove one or more claims, but even when a theory is disproved, something about human nature can be learned. Sir Francis Bacon put it succinctly in an often-repeated quotation: Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. At the same time, however, a theory cannot be proven true; it is virtually impossible to design and carry out all the experiments with all the individuals under all the circumstances needed to exhaustively establish proof. Yet, testability insures that we can approximate truth by eliminating theoretical claims shown to be false. What is at issue here is the testability of a theory’s claims, the extent to which its claims can be objectively verified. A separate issue concerns whether or not those claims are accurate (external validity). To be sure, the issues are related in that one cannot determine a theory’s accuracy unless it is first testable.

Principle 4 —Theories Are Less Complex than People

The mind cannot produce ideas at the same level of complexity as its own. That means that theories must logically be less complex than the human mind that produced them. Bickard (1978) makes this point directly, noting that any system can itself be known and understood only by a higher-level system. Any level of organization, including the human mind, cannot be perfectly self-reflective: it cannot know its own properties. A higher-level organization is needed to do that. For example, people cognize only the results of their mental processes, not the processes themselves. I know what I think, not how I came to think what I do. Accordingly, humans are destined never to fully realize their own true nature.

In contrast, because theories of human nature are less complex than actual humans, they can be known and understood. Readers who would skip the study of theories in order to move directly to the “facts” about real children miss this crucial point. Theories are understandable because they are simpler than the phenomena they attempt to explain. Sandlot Seminar 1.1 shows the difficulty of understanding real people.

Sandlot Seminar 1.1

People are Full of Surprises

Context: Ron (45 years), a successful accountant, and his wife Sara (43 years), a schoolteacher, are having a conversation over dinner at home. Their daughter, Fran, is a high school junior who plays volleyball on the varsity team. Their son, David, is a sophom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One Preliminary Considerations
• Part Two The Endogenous Paradigm
• Part Three The Exogenous Paradigm
• Part Four The Constructivist Perspective
• Part Five Summing Up
• References
• Index