Child Development

Theories and Critical Perspectives

Rosalyn H. Shute, Phillip T. Slee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317665076
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Child Development: Theories and Critical Perspectives provides an engaging and perceptive overview of both well-established and recent theories in child and adolescent psychology. This unique summary of traditional scientific perspectives alongside critical post-modern thinking will provide readers with a sense of the historical development of different schools of thought. The authors also place theories of child development in philosophical and cultural contexts, explore links between them, and consider the implications of theory for practice in the light of the latest thinking and developments in implementation and translational science.

Early chapters cover mainstream theories such as those of Piaget, Skinner, Freud, Maccoby and Vygotsky, whilst later chapters present interesting lesser-known theorists such as Sergei Rubinstein, and more recent influential theorists such as Esther Thelen. The book also addresses lifespan perspectives and systems theory, and describes the latest thinking in areas ranging from evolutionary theory and epigenetics, to feminism, the voice of the child and Indigenous theories.

The new edition of Child Development has been extensively revised to include considerable recent advances in the field. As with the previous edition, the book has been written with the student in mind, and includes a number of useful pedagogical features including further reading, discussion questions, activities, and websites of interest.

Child Development: Theories and Critical Perspectives will be essential reading for students on advanced courses in developmental psychology, education, social work and social policy, and the lucid style will also make it accessible to readers with little or no background in psychology.

1

WAYS OF KNOWING ABOUT DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

Some of our readers may be habitual ‘preface-skippers’, and if you are one, we do encourage you to turn back to the Preface so that the rationale for this book and our general approach to this second edition are clear. We further set the context in this introductory chapter. After considering the nature of developmental psychology, we devote the main body of the chapter to discussing some ways of knowing about children: knowing them from various philosophical and theoretical perspectives, knowing them in a cultural sense and knowing them as beings placed in historical contexts. As such, the chapter reflects David Kennedy’s view that ‘characterizations of children function symbolically as carriers of deep assumptions about the construction of human subjectivity, about the ultimate meaning of the human life cycle, and about human forms of knowledge’ (Kennedy, 2000: 514).

Developmental psychology

Psychology is a relatively young discipline, which has wholeheartedly embraced a positivist philosophy and the scientific method. The field of study in psychology that is concerned with how the individual grows and changes from conception until death is known as developmental psychology, and has its own distinctive history (Cairns, 1998). Within this field, child development is one special avenue of interest. We use the word ‘child’ here generically to include all stages of development from conception through infancy, childhood and adolescence. We have laid out some historical ‘milestones’ in developmental psychology on p. 269, but it is in the body of the text that the underlying theoretical cross-fertilizations and debates are expounded. One current challenge is to consider whether theoretical diversity or integration is the way of the future. Another is whether to embrace a more critical outlook regarding the theories and assumptions underpinning the field. We are not sure that the polarization of thinking in terms of a modern–postmodern dichotomy is a helpful trend, and we hope to encourage some informed debate on the issue.

Several broad questions are addressed in this text:

1. How do children change as they develop?

2. What factors influence the developmental changes?

3. What individual differences exist in growth and development?

In each of the chapters we encourage readers to return to these questions as a way of reviewing the nature of the theories presented, as well as using the discussion questions, activities and websites listed on p. 272.

What is development?

Although it is a more than reasonable question to ask, ‘What is development?’, it is not so easy to answer. Broadly, human development is about the totality of changes that a person undergoes over time. ‘Ontogeny’ is a more biological term that similarly encapsulates the developmental history of an individual organism, human or otherwise. Willis Overton (2006) has identified two broad types of developmental change:

1. Transformational change is really morphological change that involves the emergence of novelty. An example is that of the single celled zygote differentiating and emerging into ever more complex forms.

2. Variational change describes the individual differences that occur in development – e.g. the age by which a child walks in relation to the norm.

Overton sees these as reciprocal and complementary, arguing that ‘transformational systems produce variation and variation transforms the system’ (Overton, 2006: 28). For detailed consideration of what constitutes developmental change, and what it is that changes, see Paul Baltes (1987) for an early examination of the issues and Overton (2006) for more recent writing.

The positivist view so wholeheartedly embraced by developmental psychology tends to see development as a linear unfolding of potential, although this view is challenged by those who see development as being often very non-linear and in a continual state of flux. For example, Mark Howe and Marc Lewis (2005: 248) suggest that ‘ontogeny cannot be considered hard-wired in any sense, but rather emergent, unpredictable, and always coupled with environmental events’. This idea will be considered further in later chapters, especially Chapter 10, where we discuss systems theories of development. Also relevant is Baltes’s (1987) lifespan approach, which views development as a change in adaptive capacity, potentially meaning loss as well as gain. A push to include the environment in defining development also comes from non-western perspectives, with A. Bame Nsamenang defining developmental psychology as ‘the science of human development in context’ (Nsamenang, 1999: 163). We can throw further spanners into the definitional works by observing that the western focus on ‘the individual’ as the subject of change is alien to some societies, while certain scholars are critical of developmental science’s ‘future focus’, to the neglect of the here and now (see Chapters 9 and 12).

The question of how to define development is inextricably linked with two further questions: what is it that develops, and how? The ‘what’ can be considered relatively narrowly, as in the case of Jean Piaget’s schemas, or more broadly, in terms of different facets of development. For example, attachment theorists focus on emotional development and ethologists on evolved innate behaviours, while for others cognitive development is central.

As for the ‘how’ of change, this is extensively considered in the chapters that follow. For example, Piaget focused on how developing children construct their own knowledge as a largely solitary activity, while the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky theorized that children’s cognitive abilities develop through interaction with others, although these theories may be better seen as complementary rather than in opposition (Lourenço, 2012).

Lifespan development

Our subject matter of the early years is where the major focus of developmental psychology lay for many years. Sigmund Freud, for example (see Chapter 5), emphasized the significance of the first years as the formative ones in human development, which implies that the study of adults is of little relevance to developmental psychology; that is, while it may be acknowledged that individuals continue to change past adolescence, such changes might be viewed as largely cultural and not the result of ‘gene expression’, and lacking the age-linked and universal qualities that often characterize developmental theories.

By contrast, other theorists such as Erik Erikson (see Chapters 3, 5 and 8) emphasized that human development continues across the life-cycle. Simplistically, lifespan development is ‘the study of the development of living organisms from conception to the end of life’ (Overton, 2010: 4) but, as Overton further notes, a more considered examination highlights the underpinning complexities. Typically, lifespan theories consider age-related areas of study (e.g. infancy) in the context of various dimensions (e.g. biological and cognitive) against the background of the various systems within which the individual develops, such as family and school.

Such systemic views characterize development in a number of important ways (Shanahan et al., 2000). First, they emphasize lasting malleability: ‘the prominent place of plasticity in many theories acknowledges that change can occur at any level of organization in the ecology of human development and that intra-individual variability is possible across the entire life-span’ (Shanahan et al., 2000: 421). Indeed, in relation to the structure and functions of the human brain, there is now ‘compelling evidence in favor of structural plasticity throughout life’ (Leuner and Gould, 2010: 112). Second, in adopting a more contextual ‘life-history’ view of development, account can be taken of secular trends such as changes in the onset of girls’ puberty and the health status of children. Third, the greater appreciation of individual differences afforded by systems approaches has restricted the degree to which developmental psychology is looking for generalizability. Finally, the understanding of the impact of multiple contexts and multi-directional influences on development has contributed significantly to an appreciation of life-cycle development. We see a lifespan view as offering a broader context against which to view children’s development and we will refer to this perspective from time to time, particularly in Chapter 8.

Why study child development?

A dominant theme, as verified by an examination of the contents pages in significant journals, is that of raising children. This ongoing concern arose from the writings of early philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and religious writers such as John Wesley.

It is also recognized that through the study of children we may come to understand adult behaviour better. As John Milton commented in Paradise Lost, ‘The childhood shows the man as morning shows the day’ (Milton, 1671/2007: Book IV, 220–1). Gabriel Compayré, a nineteenth-century French educationalist, also believed that information concerning the child’s early years would serve to illuminate later development: ‘If childhood is the cradle of humanity, the study of childhood is the cradle and necessary introduction to all future psychology’ (Compayré, 1896: 3).

From a somewhat different perspective, Charles Darwin believed that the child was the link between animal and human species. The birth of his son (nicknamed ‘Doddy’) prompted Darwin to begin a diary description of Doddy’s development – a ‘baby biography’. By observing the development of the infant, Darwin believed some understanding could be reached about the species itself. For example, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin argued that emotional expression was basically a physiological matter and that expressive gestures were largely universal and innate:

Everyone who has had much to do with young children must have seen how naturally they take to biting when in a passion. It seems instinctive in them as in young crocodiles, who snap their little jaws as soon as they emerge from the egg.

(Darwin, 1872/1965: 241–2)

Gene Medinnus (1976) identified four main reasons for studying children, which remain pertinent:

1. An intellectual curiosity concerning natural phenomena.

2. The need to gain information to guide children’s behaviour.

3. To increase our ability to predict behaviour.

4. The need to understand our own (adult) behaviour.

We contend strongly that the study of development does not occur in a historical, cultural or philosophical vacuum. It is a salutary point to consider that the very words ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ have changed their meaning in recent western history and have different meanings in different cultures. The historical element is highlighted when, with the benefit of hindsight, we note that Darwin’s observations were designed to explore the links between animal and human species. The infant was essentially depicted as a biological organism influenced and shaped to a greater or lesser degree by the environment. A surge of interest in the study of children along with the study of so-called ‘primitives’ arose as the perceived key to an improved understanding of the development of ‘normal’ behaviour. The concept of ‘recapitulation’ – the idea that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, or that individuals in their lifetime demonstrate the patterns and stages exhibited in the development of the species – underpins the writing of many early theorists, such as G. Stanley Hall (see Chapter 3). The identification of children’s stages of development and the obsession with minutely recording normal growth and development characterized much early research, such as that of Arnold Gesell (see Chapter 4).

A postmodern outlook points out that the conduct of this science went hand in hand with the development of an empirical methodology that clearly separated the observer from the observed, in the best interests of the scientific endeavour. The child was objectified, in the spotlight of this critical gaze. The exercise involved a gendered division of labour, with men viewed as having the necessary credentials to conduct objective, verifiable observations: ‘Women were excluded from the investigative enterprise because they were declared constitutionally incapable of regarding their children with the requisite objectivity’ (Burman, 1994: 12). So, in a postmodern context, our attention is drawn to the various factors impacting on and shaping the study of child development, which is also related to how we conduct science. Some of these issues facing contemporary psychology are examined in more detail in the later chapters.

Three factors shaping views of development

Writers have identified a number of factors that have shaped our views of children and families over the centuries (Ariès, 1962; Clarke-Stewart, 1998; Elkind, 1987; Schorsch, 1979; Volk, 2011). As Philippe Ariès (1962) reminded us, little, if anything, escapes history or culture, not even the central elements of life itself for women, men and children. A third factor is the philosophy of science. We begin our discussion by examining the child in a historical context.

History

It is important to appreciate the view expressed by Ariès (1962): that childhood, as it is understood today in western society, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Following Ariès’s pioneering work on the history of childhood, a number of writers have supported his views. For example, Anita Schorsch observed that ‘thinkers of the 16th century, and of the preceding centuries as well, agreed that the child is nothing more than a lower animal – “the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” as Shakespeare put it baldly but succinctly’ (Schorsch, 1979: 11). Kennedy later observed, ‘Looking back to the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition, the child does not fare particularly well in adult male construction (we do not hear from the females)’ (Kennedy, 2000: 518). Ariès’s thesis is not without its shortcomings, and there also exists the idea that, at various times throughout European histo...