towards theoretical integration
Introduction
When we convened a focus group of psychology students to seek their opinions about what they would like to see in a book such as this, one member said that learning developmental psychology was like going into a dark room with a torch (flashlight, for our US readers) - one only ever sees bits and pieces and cannot put the whole picture together. He hoped that a book of this sort might be able to act like a switch to illuminate the whole room. While it would be overambitious to claim that we have achieved this, we do see the present chapter as a particularly important one since it addresses recent attempts to provide more integrative approaches to understanding child and adolescent development. Theoretical approaches with claims to holism include family therapy theories, biopsychosocial theories (especially bioecological theory), dynamic systems theory and evolutionary developmental psychology. We have also provided a reminder about general systems theory as it has provided the theoretical basis for numbers of these approaches. We also consider whether a rapprochement between positivism and postmodernism is possible.
Learning theories have helped us better understand the nature of the transfer of knowledge from the world to the child, and the organization of that knowledge. Organismic theories have helped us better understand the concept of stages of development, while contextualist theories have helped our understanding regarding interaction and 'goodness-of-fit' between children and their environments. Nativist theories aid our understanding of species-specific cognitive and emotional development. Notwithstanding these advantages of the various schools of thought, Lewis acknowledges that they produce very diverse accounts of development.
Within the various schools of thought, further diversity can be identified.
The ethologist Robert Hinde (1992a) noted that although psychology gained respectability as a science by 'aping physics', the strengths of the standard scientific approach can also be weaknesses. He observed that science proceeds by analysis, to the neglect of synthesis. There has been a gradual breaking up of the discipline of psychology into subdisciplines, which has tended to divorce developmental psychology from other relevant areas such as social and clinical psychology, and has also isolated it from other relevant fields of inquiry, such as biology. This tendency has been called 'regressive fragmentation', although some have seen it as inevitable and a healthy state of affairs (Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2001).
More recently, Sawyer (2000), like Hinde, has bemoaned the isolation of psychology from other fields. This situation reflects the reductionist para- digm of methodological individualism - the study of mental activity in isol- ation from social or cultural context, which dominates APA journals, as discussed in Chapter 9. Sawyer suggests that this approach will ultimately render psychology redundant, reducing explanations of human behaviour to a biomedical level, an issue we raised in Chapter 2 (but provided an argument against in Chapter 7). Indeed, attempts to reduce explanations of human development and behaviour to the level of genetics have already occurred, in the field of sociobiology - paradoxically, this form of reduc- tionism has been claimed as a unifying force, since all aspects of human activity and development are seen as ultimately being aimed towards the single end of gene reproduction (Lerner and von Eye, 1992). However, this is an example of an explanation of behaviour in terms of ultimate function, whereas most of the theories we have encountered in this book offer explanations of development in terms of mechanisms, which rarely span different levels of analysis. Sawyer notes the rarity of anti-reduction- ist, interdisciplinary approaches to human behaviour that use psychological theory to link culture and biology, and that recognize 'emergent properties' (a concept we will explain later).
Thus, concern has been expressed in recent years that developmental psychology has become isolated both from other relevant disciplines, such as biology and sociology, and from other areas within psychology.
Furthermore, as we mentioned earlier in this book, there has been a move
within developmental psychology itself away from 'grand theories' and towards many mini-theories. For example, Underwood et al. (2001) have expressed their concern that the field of aggression is in danger of going the same way as observed by Watkins in the field of memory - into a stage of 'personalized theorizing', 'in which theories become much like tooth- brushes in that everyone must have one of her own' (2001: 275). Weinert andWeinert (1998: 25) appear resigned to this situation, stating that 'The time of the "large theories" and broad theoretical controversies is past.
Micromodels and microtheories have dominated the field for some time'.
While they see an advantage in that this diversity accommodates a wide variety of phenomena and empirical data, they also acknowledge that com- prehensive pictures of phenomena are unlikely to emerge. Similarly, in her book on child development theories, Miller (1993) concluded that, 'Although it is tempting to tidy up the assortment of theories presented here by offering an orderly set of conclusions, that aim is unrealistic' (1993: 426). Lewis (2000: 36) has noted the difficulty developmental psychologists themselves have of making sense of the proliferation of theoretical approaches, which he describes as constituting a 'Tower of Babel'. Little wonder, then, that students of psychology are equally perplexed!
Despite the apparent surrender of some to the dominance of micro- theories, as the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first, there was also a discernible thrust in the direction of integration. Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) have called for a 'unified psychology', citing the well- known parable of the blind men touching various parts of an elephant and each conceiving of it as a very different creature. They cite work from the 1950s by Berlin, which drew upon another animal analogy in the words of the Greek poet Archilocus: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. They call for a more hedgehog-like approach to psy- chology. They endorse the suggestion that this need not be through the old 'grand theory' approach, but through interlevel and interfield theories, in a similar way to that proposed by Hinde. Interlevel theories seek to bridge more fundamental levels of analysis (such as basic learning principles) with more molar levels (such as language learning). Interfield theories adopt a combination of approaches, such as biological and psychological, to prob- lems. Sternberg and Grigorenko call for a 'converging operations approach' in which psychology operates on the basis of phenomena under investiga- tion, rather than separate fields of inquiry, with varieties of perspectives and methodologies applied. They acknowledge the difficulty of achieving this given that the status quo values narrow specialization in psychology, a point also made by one of the present authors in calling for an integrative approach to developmental psychology (Shute and Paton, 1992).
Research and theories based on narrow perspectives can be especially frustrating for practitioners, who are not working with 'children doing
strange things in strange situations' (to paraphrase Bronfenbrenner), but who are working with real, whole children, with their physical endowment, cognitions, emotions and behaviours, within their families, peer groups, schools and broader cultures. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that some of the thrust towards more holistic and integrative approaches to child development has come from those concerned with applied issues. In the present chapter and the final one, which addresses applied issues, we will draw upon our own fields of interest (childhood chronic illness and peer relationships), among others, to exemplify the importance of having inte- grative theories upon which practitioners can draw.