The National Teachers College

Assignment #1
Developmental Psychology


Submitted by: Suzette Grace A. Bayogbog
Schedule: MWF 11:00am 12:00pm




Submitted to: _________________
1.) Growth Development:
According to Hurlock (1982) Growth refers to
quantitative changes increase in size and
structure. An individual grows physically as
well as mentally. Development refers to
qualitative changes. It may be defined as a
progressive series of orderly, coherent
changes: progressive because the changes are
directional, they lead forward rather than
backward. Orderly and coherent because a
definite relationship exists between a given
stage and the stages which precede or follow
it.

a. PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
The infant begins life as a single fertilized
cell. Seventy-two hours after fertilization there
are thirty-two cells. These rapidly multiplying
cells are packed together to form a systems
and other bodily parts. During the period of
pregnancy the organism passes through the
three stages of development: the GERMINAL
STAGE starts from conception and ends after
the second week. The EMBRYONIC STAGE
begins when the zygote implant itself in the
uterine wall. It lasts until the eight week. Life-
giving oxygen and nutrients are passed on
from the mother to the child thus setting the
stage for rapid development. Differentiation of
bodily structures occurs during the embryos
first two months. By the end of the second
month, all the major organs have begun to
develop and sexual differentiation occurs.
The embryonic stage of development is a
critical period. Certain drugs and diseases that
have little or no effect if introduced at later
stages may have harmful effects at this time.
If a woman has a German measles during the
first two or three months of pregnancy, the
infant may show a variety of defects including
blindness and deafness.
Organs continue to grow and become
differentiated and motor behaviour begins to
appear during the third month. This is the
beginning of the fetal state. The developing
infant becomes known as a fetus. It extends
up to the period of birth. The first motor
behaviour of the infant is reflexive.
Spontaneous movement begins to occur and
may be noticed by the mother in the fourth
month.
The fetus stays in mothers uterus for about
280 days. Within this period, the
organismgrows from a one-celled zygote to a
multicellular infant about 20 inches long and
weighing about seven pounds at birth. The
organisms development is essentially a pure
maturation during the prenatal period.

b. INFANCY/Neonate Development
The neonate is a newly born individual
especially in its first month of life.
The new born infant is capable of reacting
to his environment. His reactions though are
inadequate to satisfy his most basic needs. He
therefore will need adult care for a long time to
come.
At birth, the infant has many reflexes-
simple, automatic responses to stimuli. Many
of the neonates autonomic behaviour patterns
are defence reflexes which serve to protect
him from too much of the wrong kind of
stimulation such as the eyelid and pupillary
reflexes which the body makes to intense light.
Sucking, swallowing, breathing, sneezing,
vomiting and yawning are reflexes present at
or shortly after birth.

c. BABYHOOD DEVELOPMENT
It is interesting to note that based on the
findings of the Child and Youth Research
Center. A Filipino baby manifests the following
progressive changes during his period of
development:
1-2monthsTonic-neck reflexes position (t.n.r.).
Rolls partly to side.
3 months On the verge of rolling position.
4 months Turns to prone from supine position.
Symmetrical position head in mid-
position but t.n.r. is still seen briefly.
5 months Turns back to supine from prone position.
6 7 months Rolls from stomach to stomach
8 months Alternates from prone to sitting to prone
position crawls.
9 months Pulls himself to standing position by holding
on to rail.
10 11 months Sits with good control. Cruises while
holding on to rail.
12 months Walks even if only one hand is held.

d. TODDLER DEVELOPMENT
Two years old:
Creative Aesthetic Development:
Babies are most attracted to red and least
attracted to brown. They are classified as
experimental singers.
Dental:
The lower molars of 84.61% and the upper
first molar of 60.68% of the subjects,
respectively, had erupted. No canine teeth had
erupted. At 18 months, the lower and upper
first molars of 100% of the subjects had
erupted. The upper and lower canine teeth of
52.14% of the subjects had erupted. At the
age of 24 months, all of the subject had each a
total of 16 teeth (4 central incisors, 4 first
molars, and 4 canine teeth) No child in the
study had a full complete of 20 temporary
teeth. Dental carries were found to be present
in 17.09% of the subjects. A total of 1.1% of
the subjects had started to brush their teeth.
Motor Development:
A Filipino baby or child runs, builds a tower
of 3 cubes at 18 months, squats while playing,
climb stairs by holding on to the bannister at
21 months, walks up to the stairs with feet
together before stepping, builds a tower of 7
cubes at 24 months.
e. Early Childhood Development
3 years old:
Music:
At this age, 95.20% are spontaneous
singers and a mere 4.79% develop to
producing singers, 5.24% react to music by
dancing, 85.71% by singing and 7.14% react
by clapping, humming, etc.
4years old:
Motor Development:
Kips on one foot, jumps down on both feet
from 8 elevations, and balances him on one
foot.
Adaptive behaviour:
Imitates a model, copies circle and cross,
successfully places all forms in 60-70 seconds
(sequin form board).
Personal-Social Behaviour:
Dresses and undresses by himself, bathe
by himself, brushes teeth, engages in dramatic
play.
Creative-Aesthetic Development:
Produces variegated scribblings names
the scribblings, attempts to produce symbolic
drawings, about of total population painted
objects unrecognizable.
Color preferences:
Green, red and yellow are the first three most
preferred colors respectively.
Music development: Sings spontaneously,
reacts to music by singing and dancing, current
hits and popular tunes are the favourite songs.
Displays precise movements to music, prefers
music of fast tempo and shows interest in
playing musical instruments.
5 years old:
Adaptive development:
Constructs 3 steps, builds and names
dimensional structures, copies squares,
triangle, ties and unties a knot in 11-20
seconds , repeats 4 digits, recalls a five word
sentence., supplies and names 5 to 6 parts of
the incomplete man, successfully adapts all
forms in the sequin formboard in 26-50
seconds.
Emotional development:
Manifest jealousy with siblings, friendliness
with family members and playmates of his age,
displays aggressiveness when angry but
manifests over actions when happy.
Personal-Social development:
Laces, buckles shoes alone, bosses and
criticizes others, carries long conversations,
asks more meaningful questions, related
dreams, completes play activities, compete
with peers.
Language development:
Names and identifies 5, 10 centavos, counts 1-
10, answers 7-8 action-agent test questions,
tells his name and age.
Creative-Aesthetic development:
Symbolic drawing was the significant
graphic expression of the 5 year old subjects.
Sex affected their graphic movements. Their
favourite subject matter in their symbolic
drawing expressions was a human figure.
f. PUBERTY DEVELOPMENT
Children develop of industry and curiosity
and are eager to learn or they feel inferior and
lose interest in the tasks before them.
g. ADOLESCENCE
12 years old to the late teens, is a time of
passage from childhood to adulthood.
Adolescence has been thought of as a
period of storm and stress- a time of
heighted emotional tension resulting from the
physical and glandular changes that are taking
place. While it is true that growth continues
through the early years of adolescence, it does
so at a progressively slower rate. What growth
is taking place is primarily a completion of the
pattern already set at puberty.
Not all adolescents, by any means, go
through a period of exaggerated storm and
stress. Most of them do experience emotional
instability from time to time, which is a logical
consequence of the necessity of making
adjustments to new patterns of behaviour and
to new social expectations. For example,
problems related to romance are very real at
this time. While the romance is moving along
smoothly, adolescents are happy, but they
become despondent when things begin to go
wrong. Similarly with the end of their schooling
in sight, adolescents begin to worry about their
future.
While adolescent emotions are often
intense, uncontrolled and seemingly irrational,
there is generally improvement in emotional
behaviour with each passing year. 14 years old
are often irritable, are easily excited and
explode emotionally instead of trying to
control their feelings. 16 year-olds by contrast
say they dont believe in worrying. (Hurlock,
1982).
Teen-agers are said to have achieved
emotional maturity if, at late adolescence
period they do not blow-up emotionally in the
presence of other but wait for a convenient
time and place to let off emotional steam in a
socially acceptable manner.

h. ADULTHOOD
Young people became able to commit
themselves to another person, or they develop
a sense of isolation and feel they have no one
in the world but themselves.
i. MIDDLE-AGE
Adults are willing to have and care for
children and to devote themselves to their
work and the common good, or they become
self-centered and inactive.
j. OLD-AGE
Older people enter a period of reflection,
becoming assured that their lives have been
meaningful and ready to face death with
acceptance and dignity. Or they are in
despairfo their unaccomplished goals, failures
and ill-spent lives.

2. Discuss the stages of development:
Development concerns itself with the study
of human behaviour in all its aspects of growth
and development.
The entire life of an individual which is divided
into the stages of prenatal, neonatal, infancy,
childhood, adolescence, adulthood and
senescence are scientifically presented with its
physical, mental, emotional, social and moral
developments during the period.
The stages of growth and maturation, the
effects of environmental influences upon
individual patterns of development and
psychological and social interactions between
the child and the society into which he is born
and in which he is reared.
Man from puberty to later life,
approximately from 12 to 20 years old involves
the physical and mental maturation of an
individual, as well as the attainment of
emotional and social maturity.

3. Discuss the natural history language of
children
Includes every means of communications
in which thoughts and feelings are symbolized
so as to convey meaning to others. The
differences in the versatility of human beings
are most evident with respect to the
acquisition of the verbal tools of problem-
solving.
The newly born infant communicates first
by crying. Crying means many things as he
grows older. It will mean specific situations. In
addition to crying, a baby makes many simple
sounds during the first months of life like
grunts of pain, squeals of delights, yawns,
guttural sounds, growl, etc. These are known
as cooing sounds but some will develop in
babbling. He utters syllables like da, na,
ma. Later, these sounds became ma-ma-
ma or da-da-da. Babbling, as Hurlock
(1982) has pointed out, is a verbal practice
that lays the foundation for developing the
skilled movement required in speech. Babbling
becomes prevalent around the fifth month. It
obviously indicates greater control over the
speech mechanisms than the earlier unpattern
sounds.
Later, syllables will combine to form words.
The average child says his first word by the
time he is a year old. He is able to comprehend
words though long before he can utter them.
By age two, he has a fair-sized vocabulary of
nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The period of
greatest vocabulary increase is between the
ages of two to four. By the time he is six, the
average child has a vocabulary of about seven
to eight thousand words (Hilgard, Atkinson and
Atkinson, 1996). The development of
vocabulary continues for many years.
Language is influenced both by maturation
and environment.

4. Discuss the principles of development
An average baby 7 and half pounds at
birth,15 pounds at 6 months about 22 pounds
at one year and 30 pounds at the age of a
year Development is more rapid in early age:
This is true both in physical as well as mental
development. Principles of Development & This
principle suggest the important of the
preschool and early school years because
speech habits, attitudes, concepts and patterns
of conduct and personality are acquired during
this period. A child of 2 years has a
vocabulary of about 300 words and at 8 years
3000 words. It is not as rapid after 8 years. A
half. These changes are often as silent and
gradual as to be almost invisible over a long
duration but some time they are as fast as to
be noticed quite easily. For example, shooting
up in height and sudden change in social
interest, intellectual curiosity and emotional
make- up. Principle of lack of uniformity in
the developmental rate. Development though
continuous does not exhibit steadiness and
uniformity in terms of the rate of development
in various dimensions of personality or in the
developmental periods and stages of life. The
changes, however small and gradual, continue
to take place in all dimensions of ones
personality throughout one 'life. Principle of
continuity. Development follows the principle
of continuity which means that in ones life it is
never- ending process. It starts with
conception and ends with death. Principles
of Development such as by calling all men
daddy and all women mummy but as he
grows, he begins to use these names only for
his father and mother. For example, when a
newborn infant cries, his whole body is
involved in doing so but as he develops, it is
limited to the vocal cords, facial expressions
and eyes etc. Principle of proceeding from
general to specific responses. While developing
in relation to any aspect of personality, the
child first picks up general responses and learn
to show specific responses afterward. Thus,
infancy, pre-childhood, later childhood,
adolescence, adulthood and old age is the
sequence of development in the human beings.
Principle of uniformity of Pattern. Development
occurs in an orderly manner and follows a
certain pattern and sequence. Principle of
interaction. The process of development
involves active interaction between the forces
within the individual and the forces belonging
to his environment. What is inherited by the
organism at the time of conception is first
influenced received in the womb of the mother
and after birth by the forces of the physical
and socio-psychological environment for its
development. A healthy body tends to develop
a healthy mind. Inadequate physical or mental
development may result in a socially or
emotionally maladjusted personality. Principle
of interrelation. The various aspects or
dimensions of ones growth and development
are interrelated. What is achieved or not
achieved in one or other dimension surely
affects the development in other dimensions.
For example with the knowledge of the
development of the bones of a child it is
possible to predict his adult structure and size.
Principle of Predictability. Development is
predictable, which means we can forecast the
general nature and behavior of a child in one
or more aspects at any particular stage of its
growth and development. This means that
childs arms develop before the hands. The
hands and feet develop before the fingers and
toes. Principle of Proximodistal tendencies.
According to Proximodistal tendencies
development proceeds from the center of the
body outward. That is why, before it becomes
able to stand ,the child first gains control over
his head and arms and then on his legs.
Principle of Cephalocaudal tendencies.
According to cephalocaudal tendencies
development proceeds in the direction of the
longitudinal axis (head to foot).

5. Discuss the principles of heredity
Mendel's principles of heredity
Definition:
Two principles of heredity were formulated
by Gregor Mendel in 1866, based on his
observations of the characteristics of pea
plants from one generation to the next. The
principles were somewhat modified by
subsequent genetic research.

Mendel's Law of segregation:
The characteristics of the offspring are
derived from both maternal and paternal
factors. Every individual has a pair of genes
governing a particular characteristic (e.g. the
color of the eyes). During the formation of sex
cells each pair is separated (segregated) so
that each sex cell (egg or sperm) carries only
one form of each gene. The offspring thus
receives one from each parent and this pair of
genes determines how the characteristic is
expressed (e.g. whether the child's eyes are
blue or brown).

Mendel's law of independent assortment:
When considering more than one gene,
Mendel noted that two characteristics do not
always appear together. For instance a mother
with blonde hair and blue eyes may have a
blonde-haired child with brown eyes. Thus
different characteristics can be independently
inherited.


6. Trace the history of child development
and take note of psychology behind:
The notion that children "develop" seems
an intuitive, obvious, and even self-evident
idea. Children are born small, knowing the
world in limited ways, with little or no
understanding of other people as separate
from themselves in body or mind, and no
understanding of social relations or morality.
They grow larger, learn about the physical and
social worlds, join different cooperative social
groups, and cultivate a more and more
complex sense of right and wrong.
Psychologists, teachers, and others who deal
with children constantly invoke the
term development as a way to understand the
child's status and to rationalize practice. The
language of development permeates child
psychology and the child centered professions.
Practitioners in these areas speak of such
things as "developmentally appropriate
practices" for early childhood education,
developmental "readiness" for reading, and
"stages" of cognitive, moral, and social
development. Policymakers often turn to
developmental psychologists to help justify
social programs on behalf of children. If "high-
quality" child care enhances a child's
development, then providing such care is good
public policy.
The idea of development is used
extensively to give order and meaning to
changes over time in children's physical,
cognitive, psychosocial, and moral
development. Development provides the
rationale for myriad practices and policies
related to children. There are, however,
several concepts embedded in the idea of
development that, upon closer inspection, may
not be quite so obvious. What is not as obvious
as the idea of development itself are the
mechanism(s), direction(s), and end(s) of
development. When one thinks about
development in these terms and considers
more deeply the origins and meaning of the
idea of development, the obvious does not
appear quite so obvious any longer.
Development is a teleological conceptit
must have a direction and an end. The
presumption is that later stages build on earlier
stages and are more developed and "better"
than earlier stages. The Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget (18961980) proposed formal
operations as the universal end of cognitive
development. For Piaget, formal operations
provided the most comprehensive and logically
powerful organization of thought. Extending
Piaget's work, Lawrence Kohlberg elaborated a
stage-based theory of moral development. He
too invoked a universal end based upon
increasingly abstract conceptions of justice.
Both Piaget and Kohlberg have been criticized
for their initial presumptions about
universality: more differences across cultures
and between genders exist than either
expected. These variations have rattled the
bones of those seeking a universal, timeless
developmental psychology but, at the same
time, opened the doors to a more pluralistic
notion of development. Still, typical notions of
development (universal or not) presume that
development proceeds in a specific direction
and that later stages are "better" and more
comprehensive than early stages. Direction
and end are axiomatic to development.
At the very core of the idea of
development are values and ideas about the
"good" for individuals and societies. Later
stages are not only more comprehensive, they
also represent better ways of being because
the end is highly valued as a good for human
existence. If development is going somewhere,
if later states are "better" or "higher" than
previous states, then the "end" must represent
some pinnacle of human excellence; the end
must be good. On what bases are these ends
grounded? These questions are critical for any
inquiry into the meaning of development. The
idea of development is as much grounded in
values as in empirical facts. Can science
provide values? (It should be noted that this
entry does not address development in
domains that are highly "canalized"domains
that are highly driven by genetics and
physiology, for example, aspects of perceptual
or motor development.)
This entry explores the meaning of
development by first introducing the historical
context out of which the idea of development
in children arose in American thought. Second,
the entry briefly explicates the work of two
prominent American thinkers whose ideas
about development were founded upon
dramatically different assumptions about the
source, mechanisms, and ends of
development. James Mark Baldwin elaborated
an enormously complex notion of natural
development under a thinly disguised divinity.
For Baldwin, the direction and end of
development inhered in nature itself, conceived
as good, true, and beautiful. In stark contrast,
John Dewey resisted the temper of the times
and rested his ideas about development on a
set of explicitly chosen values. The contrast
illustrates the fundamental difference between
conceiving development as a natural or as a
socially guided processthe child as a natural
or as a cultural being.
The Historical Origins of the Idea of
Development in Children
The idea of development did not begin or
end with children. The idea of development in
children arose from a set of older ideas about
natural and human history. By the mid-
nineteenth century, ideas about evolution,
development, and progress formed a virtual
trinity. Evolutionary history (phylogeny),
individual development (ontogeny), and social
change (history) all illustrated and revealed
development. When systematic child study
began in the United States, it entered through
an ideological prism of evolution, progress, and
development.
Although arguments for development in
both natural and human history were not new,
the nineteenth is most famously known as the
century of "history," "development," and
"progress." Prior to the publication of the
theories of the English naturalist Charles
Darwin (18091882), the Scottish publisher
and author Robert Chambers (18021871), in
his influential 1844 anonymously published
book, Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation, maintained that alongside gravitation
there was one great law of lifethe law of
development. Just as inorganic matter was
governed by the principle of gravitation, so all
of life was governed by the principle of
development. The English philosopher Herbert
Spencer (18201903) captured the optimistic
spirit of the times when he wrote that the
ultimate development of the ideal man (in his
words) was logically certain; progress was not
an accident for Spencer, it was a necessity.
Civilization, Spencer wrote, was not artificial,
but part of nature and all of a piece of a
developing embryo or the unfolding of a
flower. This was no mere analogy for either
Spencer or the American culture that so
warmly welcomed him.
Amidst the din of development, Darwin
remained (arguably) neutral. Darwin's theory
of evolution by natural selection, as set forth in
his seminal work, On the Origin of
Species (1859), served not only as a radical
secular theory of the origin of humans; it also
provided a new scientific sanction for a set of
older beliefs. Though Darwin himself was not
committed to the notion that the evolutionary
record implied development or progressthat
human beings are necessarily more
"developed" than other species, or that species
perfect themselves through evolutionary
changemany of his predecessors and
proponents were just so committed. Darwin's
theory of gradual, no progressive evolutionary
change was assimilated into a culture that was
ideologically prepared to receive and transform
Darwin into a spokesman for development in
general. Armed with the authority of science,
developmental zealots seized upon the new
and secular science to confirm and extend a
set of older ideas. Biologists, philosophers,
historians, and many of the blossoming new
social and political scientists seized Darwin's
theory of evolution as a platform for
demonstrating development in fields far and
wide. So-called evolutionary theists worked
hard at reconciling the Biblical account of
human origin with the new science. Many
solved the dilemma by assimilating natural law
as a visible demonstration of God's work. Riots
of analogies were drawn between the
development of different animal species,
human races, civilizations, and children. The
idea of development, broadly construed and
expressed in fields as divergent as evolutionary
theory, philosophy, anthropology, and history
formed, the dominant intellectual context for
the systematic study of development in
children. The child's development served to
demonstrate the connection between
development in evolution and the development
of civilization. The child became a linchpina
link between natural and human history.
Development: The Natural, the Social, and the Good
Both James Mark Baldwin (18611934)
and John Dewey (18591952) were
distinguished philosophical psychologists.
Baldwin was a brilliant theorist whose theory is
now recognized as an anticipation of Piaget's
work. More recently, Baldwin's work has
inspired a number of both historical and
empirical inquiries. His psychology was
complex, comprehensive, and brilliant in many
ways. Baldwin rested much of his work on a
platform of evolutionary theory to explain
development in general, across natural and
human history. John Dewey was a first-rate
philosopher who focused his many lines of
inquiry around education.
Both men wrote about evolution, child
development, and history but in profoundly
different ways. Baldwin found natural lines of
development in evolution, child development,
and historical change. Nature governed and
directed these developmental processes toward
truth, beauty, and goodness. Dewey saw no
inevitable, automatic, or general development
in any of these passages of change over time.
He believed that the direction and ends of
individual and social development were based
on culturally negotiated values. The contrast
between Baldwin and Dewey is powerful. It
illustrates the vastly different implications of
understanding child development as a naturally
occurring process in which the end resides in
nature or in culture and history. Both theories
are anchored in values, but the source of those
values differs.
James Mark Baldwin. Baldwin entered
Princeton University (then the College of New
Jersey) in 1881 and soon fell under the
influence of minister, professor, and college
president James McCosh. McCosh was one of
many liberal clergy who struggled to reconcile
science and scripture. He taught the young
Baldwin that human beings were
fundamentally good and that just as science
revealed divine handiwork in nature so moral
philosophy demonstrated moral purpose and
design in human affairs. Moral law was as real
and inexorable as gravity, and both indicated
the presence of a divine governor of the world.
When Baldwin elaborated a thinly empirical but
richly theoretical account of child development,
he maintained his professor's conviction that to
describe normal social practice was also to
prescribe ethical behavior. Through his many
written volumes Baldwin specified ends of
development founded upon presumably natural
causes. In so doing, Baldwin proposed a basic
concurrence between the natural and the good.
People are good because God directs nature
toward the good.
Baldwin acknowledged evolutionary biology
as the "handmaiden" to individual
development. Darwin identified natural
selection as the mechanism of evolutionary
change. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (17441802)
proposed that animals may, through effort,
modify their form to better adapt to the
environment and transmit these adaptations to
progeny. Without resorting to simple
Lamarckian theory, Baldwin, by a series of
rather ingenious moves, invented a second
mechanism of evolutionary
transmission, organic selection, in order to
explain apparently inherited acquired
characteristics. (The notion of organic
selection, also known as the Baldwineffect, is
still recognized by evolutionary biologists as a
mechanism that can account for various kinds
of local adaptations in species.) Baldwin
elaborated and transposed principles of
evolutionary development onto wider and
wider platforms to include both the child and
society. He depicted children's social
development as a dialectical process in which
notions of self and other developed
concurrently toward an increasingly
comprehensive understanding of both. Moral
development was part and parcel of social
development. As one of the late-nineteenth-
century idealist thinkers, Baldwin maintained
that a sense of self that is good and law-
abiding must be a public self in which private
ends and social ideals were one and the same.
The naturally developing social self is good,
and it demonstrates the unfolding of more
highly developed forms of self-realization, or
Mind. The source, direction, and end of
development are thus transcendent, beyond
the reach of ordinary human experience.
In 1884 Baldwin declared that the
embryology of society is open to study in the
nursery, and that any theory of social
organization and social progress must be
consistent with individual psychology. The
individual and society are two sides of a
naturally growing whole; the dialectic of
individual development must hold true on the
level of social organization. Thus, social
progress occurs through a dialectic process
strictly analogous to the dialectic of personal
growth in the child. Human history cannot
move in a direction that violates those states
of mindthe ideal, social, and ethical states
that have enabled the individual to come into
social relationships. Baldwin was convinced
that social progress proceeded toward the
pursuit of moral and social ends because "this
is the direction that nature itself pursues in
social evolution" (Baldwin, p. 163). The child
and society both develop by means of natural
law expressed in traditional Christian values.
Naturally occurring "facts" or descriptions of
development reveal values because values are
inherent in nature. Mind, when fully revealed,
is true, good, and beautiful. Development
leads naturally to God made manifest in
nature.
John Dewey. There were skeptics,
however, who did not believe in the trinity
among development in evolution, child
development, and social progress. They were
minority voices barely heard above the din of
development. Dewey was one of those
skeptics, and he too wrote about the meaning
of changes over time in evolution, child
development, and history. Highly critical of
those around him who found the source and
end of development in nature, Dewey once
remarked that the idea that everything
develops out of itself was an expression of
consummate juveniles a relic of an older
mode of thinking made obsolete by Darwin.
Dewey's ideas about development are
most visible in his writings on education, his
philosophical center. In a direct assault on
Spencer, Dewey found false the common
analogy between a child's development and the
unfolding of a flower. Dewey remarked that the
seed's destiny is prescribed by nature, whereas
the growth and destiny of the more plastic
child is open and variable. More flexible
outcomes are possible for richly endowed
human beings than for a seed. The child may
possess "germinal powers," according to
Dewey but, playing on the analogy of the child
as seed, he asserted that the child may
develop into a sturdy oak, a willow that bends
with every wind, a thorny cactus, or even a
poisonous weed. Dewey rejected any idea of
development that suggested or invoked the
unfolding of latent powers from within toward
a remote goal. Development does not mean
just getting something out of the child's mind;
development is manifested through lived
experience. Dewey recognized the need to
specify direction and ends to growth. He
understood that one cannot know what
development is desirable without antecedent
knowledge of what is good. It is just this
presumed antecedent knowledge on which
those purporting "natural" development
depend.
Dewey's philosophical psychology is, first
and foremost, a social psychology. He
acknowledged a rapidly changing American
landscape and lived through a period of
extraordinary social change. He contended that
ideas and institutions must change with social
change. He urged philosophers to stop
worrying about the problems of philosophers
and worry more about the problems of people.
In response to the complex nature of the
American industrial social order, Dewey leaned
most heavily on schools to provide an
institutional setting for children's development.
He proposed that education serve as a lever of
social change and charged schools with a
mandate to become places that set
development in the right direction. Dewey
maintained that teachers should strive to
provide a designed environment in which
particular ideals of development are fostered
through lived experience. Specifically, Dewey
found those ideals in democratic governance
and scientific inquiry, the latter broadly
construed and akin to the term critical
thinking.
If the classroom could become a miniature
model of a community based upon democratic
governance and critical inquiry rather than
arbitrary authority or sentiment, then that
would provide, Dewey maintained, the best
guarantee of a good society. Children arrive at
school with certain native interests or
curiosities. These dispositions are beginning
points for teachers to guide children toward
particular socially desired ends. It is the
business of school to set up environments that
make possible the creation of small
cooperative groups; the task of the teacher is
to direct natural tendencies toward systematic
inquiry and democratic governance. Systematic
inquiry into the biology of plants may thus
emerge from the children's collectively
designed and cultivated garden. From a class
trip to the zoo might emerge shared inquiry
into the history or ecology of zoos or to the
natural habitats of different zoo animals.
Growth occurs through lived experience.
Dewey hoped that transforming social
experiences in classrooms would guide children
to grow "in the right direction." The classroom
becomes a place in which the conditions of
democratic governance and inquiry free from
arbitrary authority or sentiment can and must
exist to ensure that democracy and science
thrive in the wider society. Education, growth,
and experience thus become synonymous with
one another. Knowledge and politics become
one, as science in the classroom becomes
democracy in action. Schools thus become
agents of both individual development and
social progress.
Dewey thought of schools as laboratories
in which scientists can learn about the
possibilities of human development. In 1896
he began one such "laboratory" school at the
University of Chicago. In schools, Dewey
maintained, citizens may project the type of
society they want. Dewey wanted schools to
become places in which children would grow
and carry intelligence into a social democracy.
Science and democracy demand one another,
because science is the most democratic means
of knowing and democracy is the most
objective means of governance.
Dewey promoted science and democracy
as ideal ends for both the child's individual
development and society's progress as well. In
this sense, he resembles Baldwin and others in
yoking individual development to social
progress. While not inscribed in nature, science
and democracy approach the status of absolute
goods because they are, in Dewey's judgment,
the best ways of solving an enormous range of
problems. Science and democracy are not
inevitable ends of history; they demand
constant nurture and reformulation. The
solution to the problem of values, endemic to
the idea of development, lies not in natural law
for Dewey but in socially agreed-upon values.
Natural law conceptions of development avoid
the problem of specifying values because the
ends of development, the good, are presumed
to be inherent in nature itself.
Having rejected development as a natural
process, Dewey posed and answered just the
sorts of questions demanded by the idea of
development. Rather than postulating
development as a natural unfolding of latent
powers, Dewey maintained that development
is a function of socially acknowledged goods for
self and society. In his judgment, democratic
governance and objective thinking were the
best guarantees of a good, just, and
experimenting society. Like the nineteenth-
century English philosopher John Stuart Mill,
the German physiologist and psychologist
Wilhelm Wundt (18321920), the American
psychologist Hugo Mnsterberg (18631916),
and others, Dewey sought a social and
developmental psychology based upon
understanding people in relation to their
cultural circumstances. In this view, culture
itself becomes a mechanism of development.
He thought that this social psychology could
stand beside the older and more entrenched
experimental psychology and become a
"second psychology." By the early 2000s,
"ecological," "socio-cultural," or socio-historical
developmental psychologists perhaps best
represented Dewey's perspective. Following on
the heels of the great Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky (18961934), contemporary
psychologists such as Urie Bronfennbrenner,
Michael Cole, Barbara Rogoff, and Jerome
Bruner have all proposed models of and
mechanisms for a cultural-historical approach
to development. These are developmental
psychologists who situate development in a
social context and understand development as
incumbent upon culturally valued goals and
social practices.
Theories of the Late Twentieth Century
and Beyond
From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, a
persistent string of philosophers, historians,
and psychologists have argued again that
psychology traffics in values in spite of its
persistent hopes to be a value-free, objective
science. Development is a value-laden idea,
sometimes derived not as closely from
empirical data as some might like to believe.
Dewey illustrates how once one renounces
natural ends to development, one must
become politically and morally engaged in a
process to determine that which shall
constitute good development and how it might
be achieved. Science cannot identify what
those goods are, but it can suggest different
ways to achieve different ends. Once one
renounces fixed and naturally determined
ends, development becomes historically
contingent. The philosopher Marx Wartofsky
wrote that there are no values in nature;
people create them. In this view, development
does not lurk directly in the people studied but
resides in the perspective used. Jerome Bruner
has argued that theories of development
require a meta-theory of values about the
good person and the good society. If
developmental psychologists fail to examine
those values and hide behind the veil of
nature, developmental theory risks becoming a
mere handmaiden of society's implicit values
rather than a consciously implemented goal.
Sheldon White has suggested that while the
idea of development may be proposed in the
context of analysis, it becomes the idea of the
Good in practical affair; and that while the idea
of development is a systematic idea, it is likely
to be treated as an ethical ideal. Bernard
Kaplan (1983) and William Kessen (1990) have
also drawn our attention to the value-laden
nature of the idea of development. The "end"
of development reflects that which people
value and toward which people steer their
children's development. These developmental
values have varied tremendously across
history and cultures. If development points the
way to the good, then it is good to help
development. In the midst of his youthful
struggles to reconcile religion with science, the
young Piaget wrote that "to hasten evolution is
to do well". Developmental psychology began
as a search for values and continues to do so
today.
REFERENCES
Custodiosa A. Sanchez, PH. D.
Paz F. Abad, PH. D.
Loreto V. Jao, ED. D.
GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY, fourth edition

Darlene D. Pedersen
Psych Notes, Clinical Pocket Guide

Frk Niazi GCET Mianwali
Principles of Development

Mendel's principles of heredity
Source: Green Facts

Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and
Society