As we identified in Chapter 6, a contrasting view to the idea that the individual is actively involved in his or her development is the idea of the passive organism influenced by the environment. However, the notion of change across the lifespan, and the concept of perfectibility and transfor- mation have a long history dating back to Aristotle's idea of action, to the Renaissance Man ideal and, latterly, to the German 'understanding psy- chology' of Dilthey (Brandtstadter, 1998). Despite this long history, devel- opmental psychology has not paid great heed to 'the developing individual's contribution to the creation of his or her own developmental
Box 8.1. An illustration of Bronfenbrenner's theory
The general principles of Bronfenbrenner's theory of interconnecting systems is illustrated in the following research conducted by Irving (1998) with Australian parents and children. Irving gathered infor- mation about four to seven year olds' social networks and peer rela- tions using parental diary reports. Her findings identified that while, as expected, mothers played a central role in the arrangment of their children's peer contacts, other adults, including family friends and relatives, also had a significant role to play. Furthermore, the location and extent of young children's peer contacts was influenced by social and cultural values.
history over the life span' (Brandtstadter, 1998: 807), possibly because of developmental psychology's preoccupation with the formative period from birth to adolescence. Early approaches to infant socialization adopted a uni-directional model, in which emphasis was given to the parents' influ- ence on the child's development.
However, in 1974 Lewis and Rosenblum (1974), in a significant publi- cation, addressed the question of how infants affect their own develop- ment. In another important paper by Richard Bell (1978) child development researchers were alerted to consider infant socialization as a bi-directional process. Investigators are now more aware of infants' ability to participate in and influence the outcome of their socialization. Infants are not simply passive creatures who are moulded and changed by their caregivers, any more than caregivers are unresponsive to infant behaviour.
In a review of the infant's social world, Lamb (1977) concluded that there is very little support for the belief that infants are passive recipients of socializing stimulation. Not only are there marked individual differences apparent at birth and consistently thereafter; infants are also shown to play an active role in modulating their interaction with the social world. This notion of the active individual, adapting to changing circumstances, is central to lifespan psychology.
Lifespan developmental psychology is a contextually oriented psych- ology with the core assumption that development is not completed at adulthood. Rather, ontogenesis continues across the entire life course, and the notion of development is adapted and used to encompass the idea of lifelong adaptive learning (Baltes et al, 1998; Harris, 1957; Wohlwill, 1973). The scene was set for lifespan theory by Baltes (1979: 1) when he wrote, 'There can be no strong field of lifespan developmental psychology without a solid foundation in and connection to childhood. By the same token, the study of child development does not exist in a vacuum, but is vitally enriched by considering the aftermath of childhood'.
The contextual model developed by a number of authors draws on the work of Pepper (1942) discussed earlier in this chapter. The twin notions of 'constant change' and 'embeddedness' emphasize change as promoting change. As Lerner (1983) notes, the organism is conceived of in relation to, or in transaction with, its context.
Recent research into infant neurobiological development has empha- sized plasticity in development. By contrast with other organisms with a lower ratio of association-to-sensory fibres (Hebb, 1949), which results in a higher correlation between sensory input and behavioural output, human behaviour is less stereotyped in nature. That is, human behaviour bears a lower correlation between stimulus input and behavioural output.
This situation means that the individual and social system have high regulatory requirements. Lerner and Stefanis (2000: 476) have argued that 'the regulation by individuals of their relations with their complex
and changing context is the process involved in successful development across life'.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have focused on contextualism as a means for under- standing human development. Contextualism is significantly different from either mechanistic or organismic views of development. We have taken Pepper's (1942) idea that the root metaphor for contextualism is the real historic event in all its dynamic activity. To this end we have examined the contributions of a number of different theorists, some of whom are more strongly identified with contextualism than others. The writing of Margaret Mead, for example, has been included here because of the contribution she made to highlighting the significance of culture in understanding and interpreting development. In this, she shares some affinity with the writ- ings of John Dewey. There is no doubt that contextualism has had, and continues to exert, a strong impact on the study of child development today, especially under the influence of Bronfenbrenner's theorizing.
development
Introduction
We saw in the previous chapter how certain theorists acknowledged the importance of environmental contexts in children's development. The total context consists of all the conditions surrounding an event, including the physical and social world. In Bronfenbrenner's account, the outermost 'ring' of the environment is the sociocultural context within which the inner environmental systems operate. It is this sociocultural context, according to Georgioudi and Rosnow (1986), that gives meaning to the event. However, the field of child development, as understood by ourselves and (presumably) most of our readers, is a product of western society, and so it can be questioned how far theorizing about development is truly sen- sitive to sociocultural issues.
Vygotsky's dialectical theory (see Chapter 7) is nowadays given a prom- inent place in child development textbooks, and provides a framework for understanding how language-based cognitive processes, especially, are determined by culture. Nevertheless, it remains the case that our under- standing of child development is based almost entirely on a very narrow sample of the world's children, namely those from North America and western Europe. Criticisms of the underlying assumption of universality - that theories of child development that have arisen within these cultures can be applied to children worldwide - are gradually gaining influence.
Indeed, the very scientific status of developmental psychology has been questioned, on the grounds that the discipline neglects the majority of its subject matter and, even when expanding its horizons, applies a particular value system that prizes above all individualism and cognitive competence (Nsamenang, 1999).This emphasis places traditional models and methods of developmental psychology at odds with the interdependence that is cen- tral to most cultures of the world, and neglects socioemotional develop- ment in favour of rational thought. As Nsamenang and others have noted, western writings often carry the implication that alternative notions of childhood are faulty, thus leaving them open to accusations of racism.
It seems to be the case, therefore, that whenever one tries seriously to address questions about culture and development, one inevitably becomes
embroiled in philosophical, epistemological, ethical and political issues, as will be apparent in this chapter.