Theories Of Child Development Research Articles

Does Absence Matter?

This paper examines the effects of three different types of father absence on the timing of life history events among women in rural Bangladesh. Age at marriage and age at first birth are compared across women who experienced different father presence/absence conditions as children. Survival analyses show that daughters of fathers who divorced their mothers or deserted their families have consistently younger ages at marriage and first birth than other women. In contrast, daughters whose fathers were labor migrants have consistently older ages at marriage and first birth. Daughters whose fathers died when they were children show older ages at marriage and first birth than women with divorced/deserted fathers and women with fathers present. These effects may be mediated by high socioeconomic status and high levels of parental investment among the children of labor migrants, and a combination of low investment, high psychosocial stress, and low alloparental investment among women with divorced/deserted fathers. Our findings are most consistent with the Child Development Theory model of female life history strategies, though the Paternal Investment and Psychosocial Acceleration models also help explain differences between women in low paternal investment situations (e.g., father divorced/abandoned vs. father dead). Father absence in and of itself seems to have little effect on the life history strategies of Bangladeshi women once key reasons for or correlates of absence are controlled, and none of the models is a good predictor of why women with deceased fathers have delayed life histories compared with women whose fathers are present.

The Structural Model of Child Well-Being

This paper focuses on theoretical debates about child well-being and introduces the structural model of child well-being. The development of the model has its origins in the great diversity of concepts of well-being in the research field. The model is based on the definition of health by the World Health Organisation (WHO 1946), the bioecological theory of child development (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 1998), social support theory (Cobb 1976), and the socio-cultural approach to human development (Vygotsky 1962; Leont’ev 1978). The general frame of the model is founded on the new paradigm of childhood, especially the notion of the child as an active social actor. The model analyzes child well-being as a construct which is made up of dimensions of well-being at the individual level and framed by preconditions of well-being at both individual and societal levels. The dimensions of well-being are physical, mental, social, and material, while the frame of well-being consists of subjective action, a circle of care, the structures of society, and culture. The relationships between the different elements are also included in the model. The paper concludes with a discussion on the model as a whole.

Producing children in the 21st century: A critical discourse analysis of the science and techniques of monitoring early child development

The purpose of this article is to identify the implications of commonly held ideologies within theories of child development. Despite critiques to doing so, developmental theory assumes that children's bodies are unitary, natural and material. The recent explosion of neuroscience illustrates the significance of historical, social and cultural contexts to portrayals of brain development, offering the opportunity for a critical departure in thinking. Instead, this neuroscience research has been taken up in ways that align with biomedical traditions and neoliberal values. This article uses a critical discursive approach, supported by Haraway's ideas of technoscience, to analyse a population-based early child development research initiative. This initiative organises a large-scale surveillance of children's development, operating from the premise that risks to development are best captured early to optimise children's potential. The analysis in this article shows an intermingling of health and economic discourses and clarifies how the child is a figure of significant contemporary social and political interests. In a poignant example of technobiopolitics, the collusion between health research, technologies and the state enrols health professionals to participate in the production of children as subjects of social value, figured as human capital, investments in the future, or alternatively, as waste. The analysis shows how practices that participate in what has become a developmental enterprise also participate in the marginalisation of the very children they intend to serve. Hence, there is the need to rethink practices critically and move towards innovative conceptualisations of child development that hold possibilities to resist these figurations.

Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, culture, and immigration: Examining the potential mechanisms underlying Mexican-origin adolescents' organized activity participation.

The integrative model for child development and ecodevelopmental theory suggest that macro factors, such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, culture, and immigration influence the settings in which adolescents engage. The goal of this investigation was to use a combination of deductive and inductive qualitative analysis to describe the mechanisms by which these macro factors might be related to Mexican-origin adolescents' participation in organized after-school activities. Qualitative data were collected through focus group interviews with 44 adolescents, 50 parents, and 18 activity leaders from 2 neighborhoods that varied in ethnic composition and average family income. Results indicated that family socioeconomic status might be related to adolescents' participation through financial resources and parents' work. Ethnicity was identified as a predictor of participation via experiences with ethnic discrimination, particularly in the neighborhood with a low percentage of Hispanic families. Cultural values and practices were related to participants' preferences for particular activities (e.g., bilingual, church-sponsored) and adolescents' participation in activities. Immigration seemed to be a factor in parents' familiarity with and beliefs about organized activities.

Cumulative risk and child development.

Childhood multiple risk factor exposure exceeds the adverse developmental impacts of singular exposures. Multiple risk factor exposure may also explain why sociodemographic variables (e.g., poverty) can have adverse consequences. Most research on multiple risk factor exposure has relied upon cumulative risk (CR) as the measure of multiple risk. CR is constructed by dichotomizing each risk factor exposure (0 = no risk; 1 = risk) and then summing the dichotomous scores. Despite its widespread use in developmental psychology and elsewhere, CR has several shortcomings: Risk is designated arbitrarily; data on risk intensity are lost; and the index is additive, precluding the possibility of statistical interactions between risk factors. On the other hand, theoretically more compelling multiple risk metrics prove untenable because of low statistical power, extreme higher order interaction terms, low robustness, and collinearity among risk factors. CR multiple risk metrics are parsimonious, are statistically sensitive even with small samples, and make no assumptions about the relative strengths of multiple risk factors or their collinearity. CR also fits well with underlying theoretical models (e.g., Bronfenbrenner's, 1979, bioecological model; McEwen's, 1998, allostasis model of chronic stress; and Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer's, 2009, developmental evolutionary theory) concerning why multiple risk factor exposure is more harmful than singular risk exposure. We review the child CR literature, comparing CR to alternative multiple risk measurement models. We also discuss strengths and weaknesses of developmental CR research, offering analytic and theoretical suggestions to strengthen this growing area of scholarship. Finally, we highlight intervention and policy implications of CR and child development research and theory.

Updating the Baldwin effect: The biological levels behind Piaget's new theory

In 1964, Conrad Waddington (1905–1975) presented a paper in Geneva that led to an internal reassessment of the biological underpinnings of Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) theory. This in turn resulted in an overhaul of the theoretical framework upon which his stage theory of child development had been based, including his appeals to James Mark Baldwin's (1861–1934) “circular reaction.” In addition to leading to the emergence of what has elsewhere been called “Piaget's new theory,” this renovation also resulted in the update of the famous “Baldwin Effect.” Because aspects of the subsequent framework are of contemporary significance, this essay will review some of the work leading up to those updates. In reaching behind the translations to trace the sources of the arguments to which Piaget appealed, the resulting examination fills some of the gaps found in the secondary literature without quibbling over the “correct” English interpretation of translated French terms. We also go beyond how Piaget's writings have been understood in English and extract some useful additional ideas from his sources, including how to conceive of the social context in which development takes place. We see as a result how Waddington and his colleagues, including Paul Weiss (1898–1989), provided a constructive “existence proof” for the formal hierarchy of levels that Piaget had come to by other means.

Theory of mind development can withstand compromised episodic memory development

As humans, we are consciously aware of unobservable mental states, including our own during episodic memory and other people's by having a “theory of mind” (ToM). Episodic memory and ToM are closely related: they share a neural substrate and emerge close in time in ontogenetic development. This relationship is central to prominent child development and cognitive neuroscience theories of ToM, but its causal nature has not been tested empirically. The current study examined whether normal episodic memory development is necessary for normal ToM development. To investigate this, we tested H.C., a young woman with impaired episodic memory development due to early hippocampal damage, on a wide range of ToM measures. H.C.'s performance was indistinguishable from that of controls on all tests of ToM suggesting that, contrary to theoretical claims in the literature, normal episodic memory development and hippocampal function are not essential for the development of ToM.

“My Room! Private! Keep Out! This Means You!”: A Brief Overview of the Emergence of the Autonomous Teen Bedroom in Post–World War II America

This article offers a brief explanation as to why the autonomous teen bedroom became a normative feature of family life in the United States during the years following World War Two. An exclusive space that was largely restricted to middle-class, urban-dwelling girls during the Victorian era and interwar years, the teen bedroom underwent a process of democratization during the postwar years, as demographic/economic trends, shifting views on child-rearing, and the flowering of a consumer-oriented teen culture helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of the teen bedroom ideal among boys and girls from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Particular attention is paid to shifts in family size, income, and home size; the roles played by American youth and various business interests in turning the teen bedroom into a favored site of leisure and consumption; and the growing importance of child development theory and popular child-rearing advice in positioning the teen bedroom as an important tool in the maturation process.

Storytelling Dramas as a Community Building Activity in an Early Childhood Classroom

Healthy social-emotional development is promoted by building a safe, secure and respectful environment in an early childhood setting with positive and consistent relationships among adults, children, and their peers. This study explored storytelling dramas as an opportunity to build community within the context of one early childhood classroom. The study was a qualitative, interpretive analysis of 20 videotaped storytelling drama sessions containing approximately 100 stories told by children in one preschool classroom over a 6-month period. Videotapes of the 20 storytelling sessions were analyzed for patterns and themes that may represent community building within the context of one preschool classroom. Qualitative methods were used to identify themes that emerged from the videotaped data. Triangulation across investigators, time, and methods enhanced trustworthiness of interpretations. Results showed that the storytelling drama activity provided opportunities to promote community building through four emerging themes: (1) individual roles, (2) group membership, (3) inclusion, and (4) relationship building. Storytelling dramas provide teachers with an easy to implement teaching strategy that builds community and aligns with current early childhood education quality standards and child development theory.

We’re Graduating, What’s Next? Relational Contribution to the Educational Attainment of Black Bermudian Adolescent Boys

Guided by ecological and integrative theories of child development, this article examined the associations between multiple systems of influence (school and family) and the educational aspirations of Black Bermudian adolescent boys. This study used qualitative data gleaned from semistructured interviews with students in their senior year at a Bermudian public high school ( N = 18, Mage= 18). Findings revealed that family members and teachers encouraged boys to stay committed to school, thereby supporting high school graduation, academic confidence, and educational aspirations for higher education. However, boys had not learned enough about the complicated process of college and fellowship applications to execute their educational goals, leaving them to wonder “what’s next?” This study contributes to our cross-cultural and nuanced understanding of the important role that families and teachers play in the educational lives of Black male adolescents and suggests that interventions targeting families and teachers might promote the educational attainment, and consequent earnings, of Black male students.

Age at Immigration and the Adult Attainments of Child Migrants to the United States

Immigrants' age at arrival matters for schooling outcomes in a way that is predicted by child development theory: the chances of being a high school dropout increase significantly each year for children who arrive in a host country after the age of eight. The authors document this process for immigrants in the United States from a number of regions relative to appropriate comparison regions. Using instrumental variables, the authors find that the variation in education outcomes associated with variation in age at arrival influences adult outcomes that are important in the American mainstream, notably English-language proficiency and intermarriage. The authors conclude that children experience migration differently from adults depending on the timing of migration and show that migration during the early years of child development influences educational outcomes. The authors also find that variation in education outcomes induced by the interaction of migration and age at arrival changes the capacity of children to become fully integrated into the American mainstream as adults.

Paternal family relationships, child risk, and child outcomes

Contemporary focus on fathers and their influence on child development reflects a broader shift in developmental research toward efforts to understand dynamic processes that account for the multi-dimensionality of child development. The family system is a set of relationships that rarely have been studied from a full system perspective. Historically, fathers were excluded from the analysis of factors influencing child development, as were father–mother relationships. In the former case, the assumption that fathers did not matter was at the least a covert aspect of all major theories of child development, which were anchored in mother–child relationship dynamics. In the latter case, the focus was primarily on the quality of the marital relationship, with little attention to how parental relationship quality affected their children. Today, researchers are actively in pursuit of the relationship networks that impact child development and fathers are no longer an invisible component of the child's relationshi...

Analyzing Children's Learning and Development in Everyday Settings from a Cultural-Historical Wholeness Approach

The main point in this article is to conceptualise how demands connected to children's life conditions influence both children and caregivers. To pursue this aim I advocate an extension of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of children's learning and development. Vygotsky pursued a wholeness approach to children's development with his concept of “the child's social situation of development” as the child's dialectic experiential and motivational relation with his or her surrounding. This conception I extend with the concepts of institutional practice and activity setting. The conditions for children's activities are the institutional practice and its activity settings. But a child's activities in these settings also has to be seen from the child's perspective, that is, his or her motive orientation. To focus on the child's motive within an activity setting—requires the researcher to focus on the child's social situation of development to discern how the dialectic between the child's orientation within an activity setting and the demands from the setting and other persons influence the child's activities within the child's zone of proximal development.

Positive Child Well-Being: An Index Based on Data for Individual Children

Data from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health are used to develop an index of positive child well-being that has several innovative and important characteristics. It distinguishes child well-being from contexts of child development; it is built with rich micro-data (rather than population-level macro-data) to create unique measures of well-being for individual children; and it focuses on positive, rather than negative, aspects of development. These data can be aggregated to provide a perspective on the proportions of children in the population who are doing well on all, some, or no developmental domains. Based on child development theory and research, the index is constructed within a framework of four conceptually distinct developmental domains, each of which is comprised of three sub-domains. The index distinguishes among children in predicted directions, by poverty level and parental education. White children tend to do better than Hispanic or black children in all domains, though neither minority subgroup is consistently better or worse off than the other subgroup. Girls score slightly higher than boys on the index. About three in four children score positively on three or four domains. The index provides a composite, multidimensional view of positive child well-being that can be useful to researchers and policy analysts, and which addresses some weaknesses of other similar indices.

Curriculum in early childhood education: re-examined, rediscovered, renewed

Curriculum in Early Childhood Education: Re-examined, Rediscovered, Renewed Nancy File, Jennifer J. Mueller, and Debora Basler Wisneski, eds. New York: Routledge, 2011. Contents, references, index. 232 pp. $39.95 paper. ISBN: 9780415881111In their book, Curriculum in Early Child- hood Education: Re-examined, Rediscov- ered, Renewed, coeditors Nancy File, Jennifer Mueller, and Debora Wisneski offer an engaging array of essays that examine philosophical, historical, cul- tural, and political influences on early- childhood curriculum. Their volume invites readers to consider alternate views of early-childhood curriculum and to reflect more deeply on some of the major issues in the field. This book will appeal to educators, graduate students, class- room teachers, researchers, and school leaders who wish to pursue an inclusive process of curriculum development and retain a responsive, child-centered focus in their work.The editors open the book with two essays-one focusing on the under- appreciated role of teachers in curricu- lum development and the other on the role of research in informing curriculum practices. Debora Wisneski draws atten- tion to the missing voices of teachers in the literature on curriculum development and innovation. Nancy File, in turn, ques- tions how curriculum research can most effectively inform classroom practice. She argues that more attention needs to be paid to qualitative curriculum research because it can be more inclusive of chil- dren from diverse cultural backgrounds and low-income families.Part 2 examines some of the major theoretical influences on the development of early childhood curriculum and offers examples of how various theories have been applied. In chapters 3 and 4, Nancy File and J. Amos Hatch discuss develop- mental theory and why its applications in ECE curriculum have been problematic. File concludes that we need to acknowl- edge the limits of our knowledge about child development, to engage in dialogue about how child-development knowl- edge translates to practice, and to involve families and communities in questions of what should be included in the curricu- lum. Hatch argues that child-development theory has more to say about instruction than about curriculum, that is, more about how to teach than about what to teach. Although both of these curriculum perspectives expand our thinking, read- ers might wonder if or how the authors think that knowledge of child develop- ment-particularly sociocultural per- spectives-can be applied to curriculum development.In chapters 5 and 6, Jennifer Mueller examines how the broader field of curric- ulum studies can inform early-childhood curriculum development, and Judy Helm reviews the application of curriculum theory to the project approach. Both authors deepen our understanding of how theory clarifies curriculum practices. Mueller reviews how early developmen- talist perspectives led to a product view of curriculum and then how the recon- ceptualists changed the focus to curricu- lum as a sociological process involving issues of power and interpretation. She contends that curriculum theory helps us maintain a questioning and reflective stance toward practice, children's needs, and the context of teaching and learning. As examples of this, she points to discus- sions of theory and practice at Dewey's Laboratory School and the professional development work of pedagogistas and preschool teachers in Reggio Emilia. In chapter 6, Helm connects the Project Approach to Dewey's theories of educa- tion-discussing educational aims, the nature of the young learner, the role of the teacher, topic selection, visits to field sites and with experts, and use of authen- tic artifacts.Chapters 7 and 8 address the recent role of critical theory in questioning assumptions about curriculum, children's meaning making, what counts as impor- tant knowledge, and power relations in the classroom and community. …

The essential role of psychosocial risk and protective factors in pediatric traumatic brain injury research.

This article builds upon Traumatic Brain Injury Common Data Elements (TBI CDE) version 1.0 and the pediatric CDE Initiative by emphasizing the essential role of psychosocial risk and protective factors in pediatric TBI research. The goals are to provide a compelling rationale for including psychosocial risk and protective factors in addition to socioeconomic status (SES), age, and sex in the study design and analyses of pediatric TBI research and to describe recommendations for core common data elements in this domain. Risk and protective factor research is based on the ecological theory of child development in which children develop through a series of interactions with their immediate and more distant environments. Home, school, religious, and social influences are conceptualized as risk and/or protective factors. Child development and TBI researchers have interpreted risk and protective variables as main effects or as interactions and have used cumulative risk indices and moderation models to describe the relationship among these variables and outcomes that have to do with development and with recovery from TBI. It is likely that the number, type, and interaction among risk and protective factors each contribute unique variance to study outcomes. Longitudinal designs in TBI research will be essential to understanding the reciprocal relationships between risk/protective factors and the recovery/outcome made by the child. The search for effective interventions to hasten TBI recovery mandates the need to target modifiable risks and to promote protective factors in the child's environment.

Children's Agency, Children's Welfare: A Dialogical Approach to Child Development, Policy and Practice – By Carolus van Nijnatten

This book proposes a dialogical approach to child development and child welfare practice that reasserts the importance of communication – through talk, stories, narratives, language and reflection – in children's development, in professional child welfare practice and in child welfare organisational arrangements. In doing so, the book provides an overview of postmodernist contributions to child development theory as they pertain to the child welfare field. In particular, the book unpacks the concept of ‘agency’ for child welfare work. Agents take an active position in the world and can influence events that concern them. Agency develops through dialogue and interaction with other people and social institutions. The book analyses agency at three levels: for individual children and parents, for child welfare professionals, and for child welfare organisations. These are interrelated, because child welfare gets involved when parents or children lack adequate agency; that is, they lack the power or the capacity to be autonomous or to manage their lives. It is argued that the same kinds of processes are required to develop agency in children, to build or to repair agency in troubled parents, and to develop agency in child welfare professionals and organisations. Dialogue is the key process that develops agency.

Child wellbeing and protection concerns and the response of the alcohol and other drugs sector in Australia

There are growing concerns regarding child wellbeing and protection across many countries. This paper assesses the legitimacy of these concerns in the Australian context and explores the relationship between alcohol and other drugs (AOD) use by parents and child wellbeing and protection. The paper considers evidence on the relationship between AOD use by parents and child wellbeing and protection. It examines the potential role of the AOD sector in child welfare outcomes, in the context of social determinants of health. To date, relatively little attention has been directed towards the relationship between AOD misuse and both child and adolescent wellbeing and protection matters, although the AOD sector has an important preventative role for child and adolescent wellbeing and protection. Intersectoral and Family Sensitive Policy and Practices within AOD services are important to this ‘secondary prevention’ role, however there are many barriers to the achievement of such strategies. Developments in Family Sensitive Policy and Practice must be intersectoral and will require additional resources. Cross-sectoral workforce development and retention strategies, which include training in child development theories and approaches in the AOD sector, and addressing stigmatizing attitudes towards parenting AOD clients across sectors, are also necessary.

Holding back and holding behind: grade retention and students’ non-academic and academic outcomes

The present study examined the implications of grade retention (repeating a grade) and social promotion (automatic promotion to the next grade each year) for high school students’ academic and non-academic outcomes. Based on data from 3261 high school students, structural equation modeling demonstrated that, after controlling for interactions with other factors, demographic covariates and ability, there were significant (p < 0.001) main effects of grade retention. In terms of academic factors, grade retention was a significant negative predictor of academic self-concept and homework completion and a significant positive predictor of maladaptive motivation and weeks absent from school. In terms of non-academic factors, grade retention was a significant negative predictor of self-esteem but was not significantly associated with relationship with peers. In follow-up analyses using a sub-sample of retained (n = 186) and promoted (n = 186) students matched by ability, age and gender, findings were confirmed and with stronger effects on some factors. For nations and systems emphasizing grade retention and for those emphasizing social promotion, findings have implications for educational practice, policy and theories of child and academic development.

Holistically turning the world on its head

I receIved a letter this month, page 11, that highlights a problem in our school admissions system that often gets overlooked, and that adds to the pressure our PvI settings are facing. The letter also goes straight to the heart of a much bigger problem in our education system, and one which I have touched on before, namely its artificial nature. Take some time to look at theories of child development. What do you notice? do you notice that they are divided into four chunks – early, primary, secondary, higher? No. You won’t find those terms or divisions anywhere. They have no relevance to how a child develops. Now turn your attention to theories (or your own experience) of how children learn and think? any sign of the four horsemen? No. again, no relevance. So, what point am I trying to make here? Simple, how we structure our education system does not have any direct bearing or relevance on what our best knowledge tells us of how children grow, learn, play, develop, experience or thrive. They do not do so in chunks. But that is how we teach them, and that is how we separate them, and that forms the basis of every tinkering, tailoring and candlestick making of every policy that tells us how and when and what to teach children. The more you look at it, the more peculiar our education system becomes. Leaving content aside – and I was shocked recently to hear panel members and civil servants talking of teaching ‘knowledge’; really, makes you wonder why all children aren’t high achievers – it is the very nature of these artificial faultlines that cause so much, if not the most (controversial?) trouble in the education experience of our children, and parents, and even schools and settings themselves. When we talk of transitions, we should be talking about transitions of learning – whether styles or experiences – not buildings, key stages and types of education, our system should not be in conflict with itself. We should be talking of learning journeys, not which type of setting a parent feels pressured into putting their child in, scared that they might miss out on a primary school place. We should be talking about the richest experiences we can offer children, not the continued under-funding of the early years sector. Yet there has never been the political will, the financial backing or the collective knowledge in the corridors of power to effect real and lasting change. The Cambridge Review recommended extending the influence of the eYFS into key stage 1. In my opinion, the reception year should replace year 1, it should form a key stage 1 transition for children whose bodies and minds are developing towards a time when they are ready for different challenges. In an ideal world, the walls of the artificial boundaries between key stages would be broken down forever, leaving one continuous learning journey from birth to adulthood and beyond with an education system that supports and complements the development of each unique child. daydreaming perhaps, well, if it’s not broke... see Latest developments (page 10) and Foundation framework (page 20) for the government’s vision of a revised eYFS. Editor Neil Henty MSc