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Chapter 1
Getting Straight on the Goals of Developmental Science
For most students, the highest level at which they have thought about their target phenomenon is at the level of its conceptualization or underlying theory. That makes the analysis of theories a good starting point for meta-theoretical reflection. In order to analyze a theory for its underlying assumptions about the nature of people, their contexts, and the meaning of development, however, we have to be clear on how theories fit into the goals of developmental science, and to deeply understand the theories themselves.
What are the goals of developmental science?
Developmental science has three goals: to describe, explain, and optimize human development (Baltes, Reese, & Nesselroade, 1977; see Table 1.1). These goals sound very succinct, but it will take this whole chapter to unpack them. That is because developmentalists want to describe, explain, and optimize four kinds development (pictured in Figure 1.1): patterns of (1) normative change and (2) normative stability; and patterns of (3) differential change and (4) differential stability. Patterns of normative change refer to regular age-graded patterns of intra-individual change, including quantitative changes (often referred to as âtrajectoriesâ) and qualitative changes, such as the re-organization of existing forms or the emergence of new forms. Patterns of normative stability refer to regular age-graded periods of constancy, including quantitative consistency, or flat trajectories, as well as continuity in qualitative organization or functioning. We illustrate what it means to describe, explain, and optimize these kinds of development using examples from the area of childrenâs motivation for school (Wigfield et al., 2015), a key construct in developmental science and education.
Table 1.1 Goals of Developmental Science | 1. Description of patterns of intra-individual change and stability: - Depiction of patterns of normative change and stability.
- Delineation of typical quantitative trajectories.
- Delineation of typical qualitative shifts.
- Depiction of differences between people in their developmental pathways.
- Delineation of range of quantitative trajectories.
- Delineation of different kinds of qualitative shifts.
2. Explanation of patterns of intra-individual change and stability: - Account of the set of causes that produce normative change and stability.
- Specification of influences that generate typical quantitative changes.
- Specification of influences that give rise to typical qualitative shifts.
- Account of the sets of causes that produce different pathways.
- Specification of influences that generate different quantitative trajectories.
- Specification of influences that give rise to different kinds of qualitative shifts.
3. Optimization of intra-individual development: - Identification of conditions that promote optimal normative and differential development.
- Specification of influences that generate optimal trajectories and qualitative shifts.
- Specification of influences that give rise to resilience.
- Discovery of strategies and levers to create such optimal developmental conditions.
- Discovery of ways to remediate or compensate for non-optimal conditions.
- Discovery of ways to promote occurrence of optimal developmental conditions.
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Figure 1.1 The description of human development involves the depiction of patterns of normative development, both (1) quantitative change and stability and (2) qualitative change and stability, as well as patterns of differential development, both (3) quantitative change and stability and (4) qualitative change and stability (Baltes et al., 1977).
Description of Human Development
What does it mean to describe human development?
Description is the most basic task for all scientists. For developmental scientists, description involves depicting, portraying, or representing patterns of development in their target phenomena. As shown in Figure 1.1, this includes description of normative development, or typical quantitative and qualitative age-graded changes and continuities, as well as identifying the variety of different quantitative and qualitative pathways the phenomenon can take. In the area of academic motivation, many decades of descriptive research reveal that, normatively, childrenâs enthusiasm, interest, valuing, and engagement in academic activities show quantitative declines, starting with the day they enter academic classes and ending when they graduate from high school or drop out. These declines can be depicted as relatively steady linear decreases, punctuated by steeper declines at school transitions, typically around the transition to academic curriculum (during kindergarten or first grade), around grade 3 (considered the transition from âlearning to readâ to âreading to learnâ), and over the transitions to middle school and to high school. In terms of differential pathways, these quantitative declines are more pronounced, and more likely to lead to dropout prior to high school completion (which can be seen as a qualitative shift), for boys; for children and youth who struggle with the dominant language or academic material; for students who are low in socioeconomic status, or from some ethnic minority and immigrant groups; and for students who attend schools in districts that separate elementary from middle schools.
What does it mean to describe qualitative changes in development?
In general, describing qualitative change involves depicting the age-graded organizations and re-organizations in the constituents of a phenomenon, sometimes referred to as phases, stages, structures, or developmental tasks. The clearest descriptions of qualitative shifts can be found in Piagetian and neo-Piagetian accounts of development, which depict sequences of qualitatively different structural re-organizations of cognitive and affective processes (e.g., Case, 1985). In work on academic motivation (similar to other phenomena not as directly tied to cognitive developments), relatively less consensus exists about how to characterize patterns of normative qualitative changes. Some examples can be found in work on the normative development of the self-perceptions that underlie childrenâs motivation and engagement, for example, self-perceptions of ability. During early childhood, young childrenâs conceptions of effort and ability are initially fused. But with the onset of formal operations they undergo a qualitative shift: They are differentiated and take on an inverse compensatory relationship, in which low performance under conditions of high effort implies low ability (e.g., Nicholls, 1978).
How can the description of stability be part of the goals of developmental science?
It may seem surprising that developmentalists would be interested in identifying time windows during which phenomena are stable or unchanging. It seems like stable phenomena would be left to non-developmental scientists to study. Such questions make sense if one subscribes to the assumption that stability is the default state of all phenomena. If that is the case, then of interest are states that differ from this default, namely, states of change. However, it is also possible to assume that the natural state of affairs is movement, flux, or change. From this perspective, it is important to describe not only the qualities and directions of these changes, but also to document states that manage to differ from this default, namely, periods of stability, continuity, or constancy.
Explanation of Human Development
How is the explanation of development different from its description?
Explanations refer to explicit accounts of the factors that cause, influence, or produce the patterns of changes and stability that have been described. These are completely different from descriptions themselves. Descriptions answer questions like âwhat?â (i.e., the nature of the target phenomenon), âhow?â (i.e., the ways in which phenomena can change or remain the same), and âwhen?â (i.e., the ways in which these patterns appear as a function of age or time), whereas explanations focus on âwhy?â Researchers can compile the most comprehensive descriptions of the development of a phenomenon, and not have discovered a single thing about the causes that underlie it. In the description of age-graded patterns of change and stability, age by itself (i.e., time since birth) cannot explain why these patterns occur. Age (and other measures of time) can provide a metric along which change and stability can be plotted, but they are only considered to be markers or symptoms of the workings of the temporally-graded causal factors that explanatory accounts are trying to identify.
Explanations targeting normative development focus on the causes that underlie typical patterns of change and stability. In the motivational example, explanatory work focuses on the causes of the steady declines in studentsâ academic engagement and motivation, and why sharper declines are typically evident during school transitions. They would also focus on the causes that maintain engagement or compensate for losses in motivation, and so produce patterns of normative stability. Causal processes can remain the same over development, resulting in what can be called âexplanatory continuity,â or different causal processes may be involved in explaining similar phenomena at different ages, resulting in âexplanatory discontinuity.â
Of course, description and explanation are linkedâthe search for explanations is guided by signposts originating in the patterns of development that have been describedâbut even when normative descriptions have been established for decades, it often takes many more decades for causal accounts to be identified and accepted. In the motivational area, general consensus exists about normative and differential changes in academic engagement over the school careers of children and youth, but a great deal of lively debate persists about the causes of these developmentsâneurophysiological, psychological, social, and contextual factors have all been nominated.
Why do developmentalists need to explain stability?
If the natural state of all phenomena is considered to be movement or flux, then explanations are needed for how constancy can be accomplished. Such states of stability or constancy are often described as âsteady states,â and they are considered to be achieved through active means, such as are visible in all those activities needed to maintain the steady state of âbalanceâ when walking on a narrow ledge or, over longer periods of time, all those activities needed to maintain a constant weight. These active processes are captured in concepts such as maintenance, conservation, preservation, compensation, equilibrium, homeostasis, or homeorhesis.
What is meant by explanations of differential patterns of stability and change?
In addition to explaining normative patterns of development, researchers are also interested in providing a causal account for why a target phenomenon should take any of the variety of different pathways it has been observed to follow. Sometimes this task is relatively straightforwardâespecially when pathways differ only in mean level or age of onset. Then it can be the case that the same factors that explain normative change and stability can also account for different pathways. Pathways are traversed at earlier ages or at higher mean levels because some individuals have more of the factors that promote the phenomenon and fewer of the factors that undermine it. In the case of motivation, this kind of âexplanatory continuityâ has been found for some of the differences between girls and boys in motivational development. Many of the same factors that predict and explain engagement in girls (who start and remain higher in motivation) also predict and explain engagement in boys; they just operate on a lower plane for boys.
The task of differential explanation is made more challenging when the causal factors that produce normative development are not the same ones as those that generate differential pathways. Such âexplanatory discontinuityâ seems to be the case for differences in motivation, engagement, and achievement for students from different socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups. Explanatory models for white middle-class students were not adequate to explain the motivational development of students from high-poverty backgrounds, because they simply did not include all the relevant factors, such as affordable medical care (e.g., to treat ear infections, which otherwise produce high rates of school absence), dangerous neighborhoods (e.g., which can interfere with getting to school and completion of homework), or discrimination from teachers and peers.
Optimization of Human Development
How does optimization differ from explanation?
The goal of optimization of human development refers to research and intervention activities designed to figure out how to promote healthy development (also referred to as flourishing or thriving) and the development of resilience. This task goes beyond description and explanation in two ways. First, in order to optimize development, trajectories and pathways must be identified as targetsâtargets that represent âoptimalâ development. These kinds of trajectories are often better than normative development, and so represent rare or even imaginary pathways, especially for individuals and groups who experience many risk factors. The search for optimal pathways reflects the assumption that individuals hold much more potential and plasticity in their development than is typically expressed or observed.
The second way that optimization goes beyond description and explanat...
