Theories Of Child Development Research Articles

Timing of Pubertal Maturation in Girls: An Integrated Life History Approach.

Life history theory provides a metatheoretical framework for the study of pubertal timing from an evolutionary-developmental perspective. The current article reviews 5 middle-level theories--energetics theory, stress-suppression theory, psychosocial acceleration theory, paternal investment theory, and child development theory--each of which applies the basic assumptions of life history theory to the question of environmental influences on timing of puberty in girls. These theories converge in their conceptualization of pubertal timing as responsive to ecological conditions but diverge in their conceptualization of (a) the nature, extent, and direction of environmental influences and (b) the effects of pubertal timing on other reproductive variables. Competing hypotheses derived from the 5 perspectives are evaluated. An extension of W. T. Boyce and B. J. Ellis's (in press) theory of stress reactivity is proposed to account for both inhibiting and accelerating effects of psychosocial stress on timing of pubertal development. This review highlights the multiplicity of (often unrecognized) perspectives guiding research, raises challenges to virtually all of these, and presents an alternative framework in an effort to move research forward in this arena of multidisciplinary inquiry.

Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays , and: Re-Reading Harry Potter (review)

Reviewed by: Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays, and: Re-Reading Harry Potter Connie Ann Kirk (bio) Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. Edited by Giselle Liza Anatol. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003 Re-Reading Harry Potter. By Suman Gupta. London: Palgrave, 2003 Even though the entire series is not yet published, literary critics have already begun the task of reading and re-reading the Harry Potter novels that are available with the purpose of analyzing the popular books as well as the phenomenon that they have caused. Gizelle Liza Anatol's edition joins at least two other critical books of its kind so far in print: The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon, edited by Lana A. Whited (Missouri UP, 2002), and Harry Potter's World, edited by Elizabeth E. Heilman (RoutledgeFalmer, 2003). Each of these volumes uses a multidisciplinary approach, collecting essays from a spectrum of writers with diverse interests in the series. Reading Harry Potter adds to the growing analyses of the series by offering essays about the first four novels from child development and moral and social values perspectives in addition to literary and historical treatments. Re-Reading Harry Potter, Suman Gupta's brief monograph, attempts to use what he calls a "text-to-world approach" in examining political and social issues he claims the novels raise about society, including matters of race and class. Following Anatol's introduction, Reading's 14 essays are divided into three sections: "Reading Harry Potter Through Theories of Child Development," "Literary Influences and Historical Contexts," and "Morality and Social Values: Issues of Power." The first and last parts bookend the slightly shorter middle section with five essays each. The book's 217 pages conclude with a selected bibliography, index, and notes about the contributors. Essays in the child development section include "Archetypes and the Unconscious in Harry Potter and Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock and Dogsbody, " by Alice Mills; "Harry Potter and the Magical Looking Glass: Reading the Secret Life of the Preadolescent," by Lisa Damour; "Harry Potter and the Acquisition of Knowledge," by Lisa Hopkins; "Safe as Houses: Sorting and School Houses at Hogwarts," by Chantel Lavoie, and "Harry and Hierarchy: Book Banning as a Reaction to the Subversion of Authority," by Rebecca Stephens. These essays address psychological approaches to Harry's adolescence with both Jungian and Freudian readings, as well as speaking to the way young people acquire knowledge and handle hierarchal authority. In her essay on the latter subject, Stephens cautions against dismissal of Potter detractors and warns fellow critics of the series against "walling ourselves off into factions" (63). The literary and historical contexts section contains "Harry Potter's Schooldays: J. K. Rowling and the British Boarding School Novel," by Karen Manners Smith; "Accepting Mudbloods: The Ambivalent and Social Vision of J. K. Rowling's Fairy Tales," by Elaine Ostry; "Hermione and the House-Elves: The Literary and Historical Contexts of J. K. Rowling's Antislavery Campaign," by Brycchan Carey; and "Flying Cars, Floo Powder, and Flaming Torches: The Hi-Tech, Low-Tech World of Wizardry," by Margaret J. Oakes. The novels are considered here in the contexts of the school story and fairy tale genres of children's literature. Also addressed are the tradition of abolitionist literature and the role of technology in the series as commentary on science in today's world. Oakes writes that wizards are better able to access the knowledge necessary to make their magic "technology" work. By contrast, she writes, in our world, "An unfortunate by-product of burgeoning technology...is an increasing level of knowledge required to understand it, coupled with the decreased level of knowledge required to use it" (119). One result of this substitution of technology for knowledge, Oakes contends, is a dependence on machines that is "doubly dangerous" (120). The final section of the book takes up issues of moral and social values in the following essays: "Cruel Heroes and Treacherous Texts: Educating the Reader in Moral Complexity and Critical Reading in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Books," by Veronica L. Schanoes; "Harry Potter and the Rule of Law: The Central Weakness of Legal Concepts in the Wizard World," by Susan Hall...

The Art of Evidence-Based Child Psychiatry

Now that the principles and practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) have become the cornerstone of clinical practice, there appears to be a mounting backlash both in peer-reviewed articles1–,4 and in...

Using Theory to Guide Practice in Children's Pedestrian Safety Education

Few pedestrian injury prevention programs appear to articulate the theory upon which their design and evaluation are based. This article describes how theory was used to plan, develop, implement, and evaluate the educational component of a comprehensive child pedestrian intervention. Organizational and planning theories were used to guide the conceptual development, implementation, and evaluation of the program, while behavioral and child development theories were used to identify the content and strategies to address the pedestrian behavior of seven to nine year old children. The resultant program demonstrated improved road crossing and playing behaviors in the intervention group children compared to those in the comparison group. The systematic use of relevant theory in this program is likely to be associated with its positive impact on children's pedestrian safety.

Beast Dreaming: Myth, Materials, Fantasy, and Psychoanalysis in Making a Beast Costume

This paper examines the process of creativity, primarily in the context of psychoanalysis, oscillating between tactile experience—my love of fabric and the creation of a beast costume—and my thinking about both the experience and the process. It can also be read as a dialectic between my roles as amateur costume maker and professional psychotherapist—although both disciplines are practice based, one in the studio, the other in the consulting room. In recording my experience I have tried to follow the nuances of dream and fantasy, but in a cultural context. Psychoanalytical concepts are introduced that can be located not only in theories of child development, dreaming and daydreaming, but also in the myths, fairy tales, films, and literature to which I refer, as well as my own thoughts about the role of women's sewing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The journey, however, is an erratic one, following the methodology of “free association” that is used in the consulting room. The associations that accompany my beast dreaming, although located in specific contexts, are peculiar to me, but the methodology itself can be applied elsewhere. My aim is to illustrate how apparently incompatible concepts and texts can meet together in the process of creating a product, or at least in recording it. It is this process that engages me rather than the analysis of the end product, although by definition this is both evasive and elusive and risks breaking the butterfly on the wheel of theory.

Everything Under Control: A Child’s Eye View of Advertising

Research on children’s response to advertising is dominated by positivistic and' quantitative approaches and often addresses children’s failure to understand advertising in an adult manner. This paper suggests that reliance on Piaget’s theory of child development has restricted research on children and advertising, and calls for more attention to be given , to theorists such as Erikson who offer broader accounts incorporating social and cultural issues. The paper builds. a case for viewing children as active, socially and culturally situated consumers of advertising by reviewing meaning-based, reader-response and literacy approaches to advertising. It reports on a qualitative study (using photo diaries, individual interviews and small friendship group discussions) which sought a child’s eye view of advertising experiences among 10–12 year-aIds. The children shared a drive to obtain and demonstrate power in their everyday lives, and this led them to seek mastery, control and critical distance in their dealings with advertising. The study’s implications are considered for advertising practitioners, researchers and public policy makers.

Managing ‘quality’ early childhood services in England

This article focuses on the recent growth and development of the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England and discusses the issue of ‘quality’ in relation to the diversity of provision on which these developments are based. In particular the article discusses the ways in which cultural constructions of childhood and the theories of child development and learning espoused by stakeholders impact on assessments of ‘quality’.

Society of pediatric psychology presidential address: opportunities for health promotion in primary care.

To set an agenda for health promotion in primary care settings. This is a review of the scientific bases of child development as applied to pediatric psychology and health promotion. Primary care is an ideal setting for health promotion because there is a "hidden morbidity" of children with unrecognized and untreated behavioral and developmental problems that, if unresolved, may lead to psychiatric and physical disorders and increased use of the health care system. Although pediatric psychologists endorse the importance of health promotion, there are few examples in the literature involving pediatric psychologists. Recommendations are provided for a proactive agenda for health promotion programs involving pediatric psychologists in primary care. With conceptual homes in clinical and developmental psychology, expertise in theories of clinical and child development, scientific methods, and collaborative relationships with pediatricians, pediatric psychologists are in a unique position to develop and evaluate health promotion programs for use in primary care.

The problematic relationship between child development theory and teacher preparation

This article addresses questions raised in the past decade regarding the role of child development knowledge for teaching and teacher preparation. Missing from the dialogue on this issue have been the voices of the students enrolled in teacher preparation programs. Accordingly, 77 preservice teachers were surveyed at the conclusion of a child development theory course. The results were examined for themes regarding how preservice teachers come to understand the changing nature of child development, the strengths and limitations of generalized theories of development, and the applicability of child development theory to their future practice.

Children's Interest/Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy

Why is the United States one of the few advanced democratic market societies that do not offer child care as a universal public benefit or entitlement? This book--a comprehensive history of child care policy and practices in the United States from the colonial period to the present--shows why the current child care system evolved as it has and places its history within a broad comparative context. Drawing on a full range of archival material, Sonya Michel shows how child care policy in the United States was shaped by changing theories of child development and early childhood education, attitudes toward maternal employment, and conceptions of the proper roles of low-income and minority women. And she argues that the present policy--erratic, inadequate, and stigmatized--is typical of the American way of doing welfare.

A description and evaluation of a social work training programme in Moldova

This article describes and evaluates one of several international social work initiatives in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It highlights one British university's short teaching programme in the former Soviet, but now independent, Republic of Moldova. Participants came from four Moldovan universities, non-governmental organisations and government ministries. They spent 2 weeks, funded by the local UNICEF office, with British and Romanian colleagues exploring the development of social work teaching and practice. The programme focused on child and family social work. Subject areas included theories of child development, research studies of child placement and family support, and relevant social policy determining social work practice in areas such as child protection and adoption. The teaching sessions were delivered via a range of lectures, seminars, discussion groups and practical exercises. The presenters learnt much from the evaluations of the participants about the potential effectiveness of such international teaching programmes. Learning opportunities were maximised by sound preparation and review by the presenters, interim evaluations by the participants and the extensive translations of teaching materials. Successful outcomes were underpinned by ongoing efforts to apply and contextualise the teaching methods and content to the traditions, experiences and needs of the Moldovan participants.

Introduction: Honoring the Contributions of Beatrice B. Whiting

EthosVolume 29, Issue 3 p. 239-246 Introduction: Honoring the Contributions of Beatrice B. Whiting Professor Thomas S. Weisner, Professor Thomas S. Weisner Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University of California, Los AngelesSearch for more papers by this authorProfessor Carolyn Pope Edwards, Professor Carolyn Pope Edwards University of NebraskaSearch for more papers by this author Professor Thomas S. Weisner, Professor Thomas S. Weisner Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University of California, Los AngelesSearch for more papers by this authorProfessor Carolyn Pope Edwards, Professor Carolyn Pope Edwards University of NebraskaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.2001.29.3.239Citations: 3AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume29, Issue3September 2001Pages 239-246 RelatedInformation

How Early Is Too Early to Begin Life Career Planning? The Importance of the Elementary School Years

The relationship of early and middle childhood experiences to life career planning is discussed. Life career planning is presented as a life skill beginning in infancy. The authors present five premises on which they have based their discussion: Life career development is a life-long, spiraling process; Life career planning includes a series of sub-skills; Career awareness and career exploration form the foundation for effective life career planning; Idiosyncratic factors influence the decision-making of each person; and Child development theory (e.g., Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky) and career development theory (e.g., Super and Gottfredson) are interrelated. Implications for practice are included.

An Example to Us All: Child Development and Identity Construction in Early 20th-Century Playgrounds

At the turn of the 20th century, children's play came under new and heightened scrutiny by urban reformers. As conditions in US cities threatened traditional notions of order, reformers sought new ways to direct urban-social development. In this paper I explore playground reform as an institutional response that aimed to produce and promote ideal gender identities in children. Supervised summer playgrounds were established across the United States as a means of drawing children off the street and into a corrective environment. Drawing from literature published by the Playground Association of America and a case study of playground management in Cambridge, MA, I explore playground training as a means of constructing gender identities in and through public space. Playground reformers asserted, drawing from child development theory, that the child's body was a conduit through which ‘inner’ identity surfaced. The child's body became a site through which gender identities could be both monitored and produced, compelling reformers to locate playgrounds in public, visible settings. Reformers' conviction that exposing girls to public vision threatened their development motivated a series of spatial restrictions. Whereas boys were unambiguously displayed to public audiences, girls' playgrounds were organised to accommodate this fear. Playground reformers' shrewd spatial tactics exemplify the ways in which institutional authorities conceive of and deploy space toward the construction of identity.

Infancy and Childhood in India: A Critical Review

Empirical studies of childhood in India have been rare. Guided by universalistic theories of child development, developmental psychologists have seldom examined cultural variations in child-rearing patterns with Indian samples. Psychoanalytic studies of Hindu childhood have been influenced by therapeutic observations with segmented middle-class populations that are generally Westernized and educated, inviting a lively debate about the transferability of psychoanalytic individualism to non-Western contexts. Anthropological studies, invariably focused on cultural variation, have not searched for consistent cultural patterns in ethnographic materials on Hindu socialization. Based on fieldwork conducted in a village near Delhi, this article presents one of the first systematic quantitative and ethnographic studies of patterns of child care in Hindu extended families during the preschool years. The findings are discussed in terms of achieving a consensus between developmental, psychoanalytic, and anthropological observations of Indian childhood.

Revelations Through Research Partnerships

We examine how the notion of partnership permeated the methodology of a project concerned with investigating high quality educare for children under three. Partnership, in this specific sense of involving participants in the construction of knowledge, meant full participation in data collection leading to a high degree of involvement in later stages of research. The roots of this approach lie in an interpretive perspective, owing much to Vygotsky ‘s holistic theory of child development, from which stemmed the study focus upon interactions with children. We present particular qualities of the fruits of bringing educarers and parents into a perhaps uncommonly broad span of the research process.

The Relationship Between Theories of Child Development and the Early Childhood Curriculum

Developmental theories have been a resource in developing early childhood curriculum. Development is not a unified field, with a single integrated set of theories, nor does one theory or set of theories predominate. Many different competing theories exist, some dealing with only limited domains of development, and theories are perpetually being revised. The theories discussed in this article in relation to early childhood curriculum include maturationist theory, behaviorist theory, psychoanalytic theory and constructivist theories of cognitive development. Two conceptions of early childhood programs are analysed and the relationship between children's ways of thinking and their ways of knowing is discussed. The discussion concludes with a look at translating these ideas into the early childhood curriculum.

Developmental psychology and early childhood education

SUMMARY Child psychology and early childhood education are closely related, but the relationship is very complex. This is due to the fact that ‘child psychology’ at the same time covers 1) researchers' scientific psychology, 2) writers' popular psychology, and 3) parents' and teachers' common sense psychology about child development. This article presents current trends in scientific child psychology and recent studies on parents' and teachers' common sense opinions. It is concluded that no clear relationships can be demonstrated between current theories of child development and views on the part of teachers and parents. However it is evident that parents and teachers do have views on child development and education, and even that such views exercise an influence upon their behaviour towards children. Therefore, it is argued that future investigations in this comprehensive, interesting, and complex field will be very relevant.

Child Development

Summary This paper presents a theory of child development which integrates race, class, gender and culture as central factors that structure this development in fundamental ways. Human development evolves within the context of our social roles, which are fundamentally organized and bounded by our position within the class, gender, racial and cultural structure of society. This theory can be used to assess a child's maturity and to guide clinical intervention. Traditional theories of child development have overfocused on discrete tasks and stages in the evolution of a self-defined primarily by a child's level of achievement and autonomy. By contrast, our theory defines maturity by our ability to live in respectful relation to others and to our complex and multifaceted world (Almeida, Woods, Messineo, & Font, 1998). Maturity in this conceptualization requires the ability to communicate (trust), collaborate (interdependence), respect (tolerance as in acceptance of “other”) others who are different, and negotiate (expanded identity) our interdependence with our environment and with our friends, partners, families, communities and society in ways which do not entail the exploitation.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Children, Television, and Fred Rogers (review)

Reviewed by: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Children, Television, and Mister Rogers Patricia Pace (bio) Mark Collins and Margaret Mary Kimmel, eds. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Children, Television, and Mister Rogers. Foreword by Bob Greenfield. Afterword by Marion Wright Edelman. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1996. With his trademark cardigan and old-timey sneakers, Fred Rogers hardly seems an exemplar of the subversive, antiestablishment media artist. After reading this book of essays in tribute to his years of work in children’s programming, I can argue that Rogers’s TV aesthetic provides an antidote [End Page 383] to those slicker television productions intent on the manufacture of kid-size consumers with adult appetites for commodified pleasures of all sorts. As one critic notes, Fred Rogers combines the early television wizardry of Ernie Kovacs with a profound anticommercial sensibility (Bianculli 40). The program demonstrates an almost Brechtian focus on process as opposed to theatrical realism, and in postmodern parlance, erases the distinction between character and actor: Mister Rogers always and only plays himself. As a caring man attuned to the needs of children, he challenges prevalent gender stereotypes while celebrating the body in the best Whitmanesque manner, “a strain of ecstatic naturalism” in which the body is seen “as part of a real person” (Guy 104). Through his direct address and engagement with his child audience, Mister Rogers encourages children to be active, not passive, audiences. Perhaps most subversive, Mister Rogers is unabashedly for children, desirous of empowering them with strong inner resources to counter difficult public lives. And, like other artists who challenge dominant political interests, Fred Rogers has been vilified by the National Review as a “wimp”; in the testosterone-suffused world of children’s shows such as Power Rangers, that’s a compliment. The journalists, child psychologists, and teachers who have joined to produce this hagiography of Fred Rogers wouldn’t term themselves postmodern critics and are not conversant in theories of current cultural scholarship. They don’t examine Rogers’s show in any particular historical context and do not subject their assumptions about media as a social force (or Rogers’s application of child development theories) to rigorous analysis or serious critique. Scholars of an empirical bent will find little to verify the critical claim that Rogers’s educational format provides sustained benefits to child viewers, and others may protest that the critical views expressed, as well as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood itself, indulge in cultural nostalgia far removed from children’s real lives. The writers speak in highly personal and anecdotal terms, clearly valuing a narrative sensibility—bookish, if you will—far removed from Bart Simpson’s vacant eyes and, as Bob Greenfield tells us, “nihilistic Ren and Stimpy madness” (xi). Converts want to spread the word; Greenfield’s “recovery” is underway, as he cheerfully tells us in his foreword, “My name is Bob and I want to be your neighbor. Born again in Rogers” (xii). It is difficult to critique these essays in any but the terms they propose: that is, what does Fred Rogers, at home in his TV neighborhood, offer that caring adults believe is good for children? The essays in the book fall into three general categories, including considerations of the program in relation to developmental models, discussions contrasting Rogers’s contributions [End Page 384] with the general dismissal of child-friendly policies by adults and the larger public, and admiring recollections of Rogers as a public and private individual (including a photo essay by Lynn Johnson). Although it seems clear that Rogers has been an influential force in children’s programming and that Rogers as a person promotes important values ignored by the culture at large, no clear program of resistance is advocated by the writers in this book. Even Marion Wright Edelman’s afterword calling for us to “create family-friendly neighborhoods . . . [meeting] family needs . . . [organizing] parent education programs . . . child-care policies and services” (224–25) seems more rhetoric for a bygone era than a serious strategy for radical reform of family policy. The most enlightening essays in the book helped me to put aside my jaded, Barney-weary viewing persona and look at Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood with something akin to a child’s...