College of Teacher Education

1- Human Development: Meaning, Concepts and Approaches

Two Approaches to Human Development

 Traditional - an approach to human development that shows extensive change from birth to
adolescence, little or no change in adulthood and decline in late old age.
 Life-span - termed used in human development that even in adulthood developmental change
takes place as it does during childhood.

The Characteristics of Human Development from a Life-span Perspective:

1. Development is lifelong. It does not end in adulthood.

2. Development is plastic. Plasticity refers to the potential for change. Development is possible
throughout the life-span. No one is too old to learn. There is no such thing as “I am too old for that…”
Aging is associated with declines in certain intellectual abilities. These declines can be
prevented or reduced. In one research study, the reasoning abilities of older adults were improved
through retraining (Willies &Schose, 1994 cited by Santrock J., 2005)

3. Development is multidimensional. Development consists of biological, cognitive, and

socio-emotional dimensions. Development as a process is complex because it is the product of
biological, and socio-emotional processes. (Santrock, 2002)

 Biological processes involves changes in the individual’s physical nature. The child and
adolescent will gain weight and height. They will experience hormonal changes when they reach
the period of puberty, and cardiovascular decline as they approach late adulthood.

Development is relatively orderly. The child first learn to sit, crawl, then walk before they can
run.
Proximodistal pattern. The muscular control of the trunk and the arms comes earlier as
compared to the hands and fingers.
Cephalo-caudal pattern. During infancy, the greatest growth always occurs at the top (head)
-with physical growth in size, weight and future differentiation gradually working its way down from
top to bottom (for example neck, shoulders, middle trunk and so on).

Development takes places gradually. A child won’t develop into pimply teenagers overnight. It
takes years before they become one.

 Cognitive processes involve changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence, and language. A
child develop from mere sounds to a word becoming two words, the two words becoming a
sentence. They would move on to memorizing their first prayer, singing the lupang hinirang in
every flag raising ceremony to imagining what would it be like to be a teacher or a pilot,playing
chess and solving a complex math problem. All these reflect the role of cognitive processes in
development.

 Socio-emotional processes include changes in individual’s relationship with other people,

changes in emotions, and changes in personality.

The biological, cognitive and socio-emotional processes are inextricably intertwined. The effect
of one process or factor on a person’s development is not isolated from the other processes.

4. Development is contextual. Individuals are changing beings in a changing world. Individuals

respond to and act on contexts. These contexts include the individual’s biological make-up, physical
environment, cognitive processes, historical, social and cultural contexts. (Santrock, 2002).
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A child’s individual make-up may vary and therefore make them develop different from each
other.

5. Development involves growth, maintenance and regulation. These are the three goals of human
development. The goals of individuals vary among developmental stages. For instance, as individuals
reach middle and late adulthood, concern with growth gets into the back stage while maintenance
and regulation take the center stage.

To God be the Glory!