Developmental Systems Theory: An Integrative Approach - Hardcover

Ford, Donald H.; Lerner, Richard M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803946619 ISBN 13: 9780803946613

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1992

Synopsis

For decades there hasn′t been an integrative theory of development, only theories about various developmental domains such as language acquisition, personality, and peer relations. Two leading developmentalists, Donald Ford and Richard Lerner, present the first integrative theory on human development. Through a synthesis of developmental contextualism and the Living Systems Framework, the authors develop a theory that examines how a person carries out transactions with their environment and through that transaction how their biological, psychological, behavioral, and environmental elements change or remain constant. They also offer important implications of Developmental Systems Theory (DST) for research, implications for use in educational and clinical settings, and the usefulness of DST in the formulation of social policy. By integrating the results from many research investigations into a larger framework, Developmental Systems Theory offers researchers, professionals, and students a better understanding of how multiple elements interact and shape a person′s life. "Developmental Systems Theory will play an important role in the shaping of developmentalists′ research agendas in the 1990s. It aims for the main prize: the representation of the complex, dynamic organization of variables across time and contexts. Ford and Lerner′s impressive grasp of developmental principles and theory, system thinking, and such key ideas as (1) the distinction and interplay between intraindividual variability and interindividual stability, variability, and change; (2) the unity of structure and function; (3) how useful theory is developed; and (4) the need for strengthening current methodological tools and creating newer, more appropriate ones all are combined to form a volume that belongs in the working libraries of active social, behavioral, and biological scientists." --John R. Nesselroade, University of Virginia "This work has a valuable role to play on two levels: first, on the theoretical level, in synthesizing the efforts this century to understand the functioning and evolution of the human being and in proposing an epistemological background and an improved model of the development of the person. It is also important on the practical level, in particular for its effort to cleanse the notion of development from the ideological connotations it often carries. It also opens the way for further developments in the context of systems science. It shows that the classical cybernetic paradigm can still help to make improved modelization in the human sciences." --Systems Practice

About this title

About the Author

Richard M. Lerner is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the Director of the Applied Developmental Science Institute in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. A developmental psychologist, Lerner received a Ph.D. in 1971 from the City University of New York. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Association, and American Psychological Society. Prior to joining Tufts University, he held administrative posts at Michigan State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Boston College, where he was the Anita L. Brennan Professor of Education and the Director of the Center for Child, Family, and Community Partnerships. In 1994-95, he held the Tyner Eminent Scholar Chair in the Human Sciences at Florida State University. He is author or editor of 55 books and more than 360 scholarly articles and chapters. He edited Volume 1 (Theoretical Models of Human Development) for the fifth edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence and Applied Developmental Science. He is known for his theory of, and research about, relations between life-span human development and contextual or ecological change. Lerner has done foundational studies of adolescents’ relations with their peer, family, school, and community contexts and is a leader in the study of public policies and community-based programs aimed at the promotion of positive youth development. With Sage, he authored America’s Youth in Crisis: Challenges and Options for Programs and Policies (1995), co-edited the four-volume Handbook of Applied Developmental Science, and is co-editing the two-volume Encyclopedia of Applied Developmental Science.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803946619
• ISBN 13: 9780803946613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272