MODULE 3

ISSUES ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Identify the three issues of human development
2. Students should be able to take an informed stand or
position on the three issues on human development.
 DISCUSSION
1. NATURE VS. NURTURE - Nature refers to an
individual’s’ biological inheritance, genetics and heredity.
Nurture refers to environmental experiences.

Guide Questions:
Which has a more significant influence on human
development?
2. CONTINUITY VS. DISCONTINUITY – Continuity
involves gradual, cumulative change. Discontinuity involves
distinct changes?

Guide Questions:
Is our development like that of a seedling gradually growing
into an acacia tree or more like that of a caterpillar becoming a
butterfly?
3. STABILTY VS. CHANGE

Guide Questions:
A.Is development best described as involving stability or as
involving change?
B.Are we what our first experiences have made of us or do we
develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier
point in development?
 ACTIVITY:
INFORMAL SMALL GROUP DEBATE
• Students will be group into 3 groups.
• Each group will divide the members into 2 sets, affirmative and
negative.
• Each group will be given 30 minutes to discuss the assigned
issue.
• Each group will be given 10 minutes during the group debate.
• Each member should make a stand and should say something
about the issue.
 ANALYSIS
• Who are pro – nature? Pro – nurture? Why?

• Who go for continuity? Discontinuity? Why?

• Who claims stability is more correct than change?

Change is more correct than stability? Why?
 WHAT RESEARCH SAYS?
• Development is not all nature or nurture., not all continuity or
discontinuity and not all stability or all change (Lerner, 1998
quoted Santrock, 2002)
• Both genes and environment are necessary for a person to
exist. Without genes, there is no person; without
environment, there is no person.
• Heredity and environment operate together or cooperate and
interact – produce a person’s intelligence, temperament,
height, weight…ability to read.
“The interaction of heredity and environment is so
extensive that to ask which is more important, nature or
nurture, is likely asking which is more important to
rectangle, height or width”

- William Greenough