Preface
Child development is a unique field of study. Unlike other disciplines, each of us has experience with its subject matter in very personal ways. It is a discipline that deals not just with ideas and concepts and theories, but one that above all has at its heart the forces that have made each of us who we are.
This text, Child Development, second edition, seeks to capture the discipline in a way that sparks and nurtures and shapes readers' interest. It is meant to excite students about the field, to draw them into its way of looking at the world, and to mold their understanding of developmental issues. By exposing readers to both the current content and the promise inherent in child and adolescent development, the text is designed to keep interest in the discipline alive long after students' formal study of the field has ended. Overview
Child Development, second edition, provides a broad overview of the field of development. It covers the full range of childhood and adolescence, from the moment of conception through the end of adolescence. The text furnishes a broad, comprehensive introduction to the field, covering basic theories and research findings, as well as highlighting current applications outside the laboratory. It covers childhood and adolescence chronologically, encompassing the prenatal period, infancy and toddlerhood, the preschool years, middle childhood, and adolescence. Within these periods, it focuses on physical, cognitive, and social and personality development.
The book seeks to accomplish the following four major goals:
First and foremost, the book is designed to provide a broad, balanced overview of the field of child development. It introduces readers to the theories, research, and applications that constitute the discipline, examining both the traditional areas of the field as well as more recent innovations.
The book pays particular attention to the applications developed by child and adolescent development specialists. While not slighting theoretical material, the text emphasizes what we know about development across childhood and adolescence, rather than focusing on unanswered questions. It demonstrates how this knowledge may be applied to real-world problems.
In sum, the book highlights the interrelationships among theory, research, and application, accentuating the scope and diversity of the field. It also illustrates how child developmentalists use theory, research, and applications to help solve significant social problems.
The second major goal of the text is to explicitly tie development to students' lives. Findings from the study of child and adolescent development have a significant degree of relevance to students, and this text illustrates how these findings can be applied in a meaningful, practical sense. Applications are presented in a contemporaneous framework, including current news items, timely world events, and contemporary uses of child development that draw readers into the field. Numerous descriptive scenarios and vignettes reflect everyday situations in people's lives, explaining how they relate to the field.
For example, each chapter begins with an opening prologue that provides a real-life situation relating to the chapter subject area. All chapters also have an "Informed Consumer of Development" section, which explicitly suggests ways to apply developmental findings to students' experience. These sections portray how these findings can be applied, in a practical, hands-on way. Each chapter also includes a feature called "From Research to Practice" that discusses ways that developmental research is being used to answer the problems that society faces. For instance, we consider policy issues relating to the assignment of homework, as well as the acceptability of children's eye witness testimony in child abuse cases. Finally, every chapter has an interview, ("Speaking of Development") with a person working in a profession related to the chapter's topic. These interviews illustrate how a background in child development can 1~ beneficial in a variety of vocations.
The third goal of this book is to highlight both the commonalties and diversity of today's multicultural society: Consequently, every chapter has at least one "Developments Diversity" section. These features explicitly consider how cultural factors relevant to development both unite and diversify our contemporary, global society. In addition, the book incorporates material relevant to diversity throughout every chapter.
Finally, the fourth goal of the text is one that underlies the other three: making the field of child development engaging, accessible, and interesting to students. Child development is a joy both to study and teach, because so much of it has direct, immediate meaning to our lives. Because all of us are involved in our own developmental paths, we are tied in very personal ways to the content areas covered by the book. Child Development, second edition, then, is meant to engage and nurture this interest, planting a seed that will develop and flourish throughout readers' lifetimes.
To accomplish this fourth goal, the book is "user-friendly." Written in a direct, conversational voice, it replicates as much as possible a dialogue between author and student. The text is meant to be understood and mastered on its own, without the intervention of an instructor. To that end, it includes a variety of pedagogical features. Each chapter contains a "Looking Ahead" overview that sets the stage for the chapter, a running glossary, a summary, an epilogue containing critical thinking questions, and a list of key terms and concepts. In addition, each chapter has three "Review and Rethink" sections The "Review and Rethink" sections provide an enumeration of the key concepts and questions that promote and test critical thinking.
The Philosophy Behind Child Development, Second Edition. Child Development, second edition, blends and integrates theory, research, and applications. It is not an applied development book, focused solely on techniques for translating the knowledge base a development into answers to societal problems. Nor is it a theory-oriented volume, concentrating primarily on the field's abstract theories. Instead, the focus of the text is on the scope and breadth of human development during childhood and adolescence. The strategy of concentrating on the scope of the field permits the text to examine both the traditional core areas of the field, as well as evolving, nontraditional areas of development.
Furthermore, the book focuses on the here-and-now, rather than attempting to provide a detailed historical record of the field. Although it draws on the past where appropriate, does so with a view toward delineating the field as it now stands and the directions toward which it is evolving. Similarly, while providing descriptions of classic studies, the emphasis is more on current research findings and trends.
Overall, then, the book provides a broad overview of child and adolescent development integrating the theory, research, and applications of the discipline. It is meant to be a book that readers will want to keep in their own personal libraries, one that they will take off the shelf when considering problems related to that most intriguing of questions: How do people get to be the way they are?
The Specific Features of Child Development, Second Edition. CHAPTER-OPENING PROLOGUES:
Each chapter begins with vignette, describing an individual or situation that is relevant to the basic developmental issues being addressed in the chapter. For instance, the chapter on birth describes a premature birth, and the chapter on cognitive development in adolescence provides an account of a teenager who has overcome considerable odds to achieve success. LOOKING AHEAD SECTIONS:
These opening sections orient readers to the topics to be covered, bridging the opening prologue with the remainder of the chapter and providing orienting questions. FROM RESEARCH TO PRACTICE:
New to this edition, each chapter includes a box that focuses on the ways in which research in child development can be used both in terms of everyday child-rearing issues and for public policy. For instance, these boxes includes discussions on the benefits of massage for infants, teaching children desired behavior, and dealing with schoolyard bullies. DEVELOPMENTAL DIVERSITY SECTION:
Every chapter has at least one "Developmental Diversity" section incorporated into the text. These sections highlight issues relevant to the multicultural society in which we live. Examples of these sections include discussions of whether gender and culture are related to the brain's structure, development of racial and ethnic awareness, mainstreaming and full inclusion of children with special needs, and overcoming gender and racial barriers to achievement. INFORMED CONSUMER OF DEVELOPMENT:
Every chapter includes information of specific uses that can be derived from research conducted by developmental investigators. For instance, the text provides concrete information on interacting with a newborn, keeping preschoolers healthy, increasing children's competence, and choosing a career. SPEAKING OF DEVELOPMENT:
Each chapter includes an interview with a person working in a field that uses the findings of child and adolescent development. Among those interviewed are a child abuse counselor, pregnancy counselor, childcare provider, and media educator. CHILD.LINKS COMPANION WEBSITE (CW):
A new and significant feature in this edition, Child.Links are marginal icons indicating material related to a page on the World Wide Web. Readers can refer to the page number on the Child Development Companion Website page, where hot-links are provided to the relevant web sites. REVIEW AND RETHINK SECTIONS:
Interspersed throughout each chapter are three short recaps of the chapters' main points, followed by questions designed to provoke critical thinking. RUNNING GLOSSARY:
Key terms are defined in the margins of the page on which the term is presented. END-OF-CHAPTER MATERAIL:
Each chapter ends with a summary epilogue, and a list of key terms and concepts. This material is designed to help students study and retain the information in the chapter. The short epilogue includes critical thinking questions relating to the prologue at the opening of the chapter. Because the opening prologues serve as case studies that foreshadow the topics that the chapter will address, these end-of-chapter thought-provoking questions provide a way of tying the chapter together. They also illustrate how the concepts addressed in the chapter can be applied to the real-world situation described in the opening prologue. What's New in This Edition?
A considerable number of new topics and areas have been added to the second edition. For example, the coverage of behavioral genetics, cloning, evolutionary approaches, and Vygotsky receive significant new coverage. In addition, a wealth of contemporary research is cited in this edition. Hundreds of new research citations have been added, most from the last few years.
A sampling of topics that have been either newly included or expanded also illustrate the scope of the revision; they include new material on ethnography, gene therapy, new breast-feeding guidelines, automaticity in information processing, the NICHD study on infant care, memory and eyewitness testimony of children, use of Prozac and childhood depression, emotional intelligence, adolescent Web surfing, the downside of self esteem, racial and ethnic identity formation.
Furthermore, several entirely new features have been added to the second edition. As mentioned earlier, each chapter contains Child.Links that direct readers to the Child Development second edition, web site, where they will be directed to specific sites relevant to the topic being discussed. In addition, every chapter now ends with an Epilogue that includes critical thinking questions regarding the chapter Prologue, tying the material in the chapter together. ANCILLARIES
Child Development, second edition, is accompanied by a superb set of ancillary teaching materials. They include the following: For the Instructor
Instructor's Resource Manual: Prepared by Mark Rittman of Cuyahoga Community College, this manual contains a wealth of teaching tips and creative ideas for new and experienced instructors alike. Each chapter includes learning objectives, key terms/concepts, a chapter on line, lecture suggestions, demonstrations and activities, teaching tips, suggestions for student projects, transparency suggestions, handouts, and video resources for each chapter.
Test Item File: Prepared by Vincent Punzo of Earlham College, this test bank contains over 3,000 multiple-choice, true/false, short-answer, and essay questions that test factual, applied, and conceptual knowledge.
Prentice Hall Test Manager: One of the best-selling test-generating software programs on the market, Test Manager is available in Windows and Macintosh formats and contains a Gradebook, Online Network Testing, and many tools to help you edit and create tests. The program comes with full technical support and telephone "Request a Test" service.
Prentice Hall's Color Transparencies for Human Development: Designed in large-type format for lecture settings, these full-color overhead transparencies add visual appeal to your lectures by augmenting the visuals in the text with a variety of new illustrations.
PowerPoint Slides and On-line Graphics Archive: Available in the Faculty Module the Companion Website at prenhall/feldman, each chapter's art has been digitized and is available for download into any presentation software. Powerpoint lectures for each chapter are also available for download.
Prentice Hall Video Libraries: Prentice Hall has assembled a superior collection of video materials which range from short lecture launchers to full-length detailed features for use in the developmental psychology course. The videos below are available to qualified adopters.
Speaking of Development Videos: Providing students with information about job opportunities in many fields, this exclusive video tape program features interviews with 11 of the professionals highlighted within the text. Each segment visits the individual's workplace, discusses their background in developmental psychology, and how it relates to their current job.
Films for the Humanities and Sciences: A wealth of videos from the extensive library of Films for the Humanities and Sciences, on a variety of topics in developmental psychology, are available to qualified adopters. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative for a list of videos.
ABC News Videos for Developmental Psychology: These videos consist of segments ABCNEWS from ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings, Nightline, 20/20, Prime Time Live, and The Health Show.
Media Support for Child Development, Second Edition: Both instructors and students ill find many useful resources in the media program to accompany this text.
prenhall/feldman Companion Website: Prepared by Rick Mitchell of Harford Community College, this free on-line Study Guide allows students to review each chapter's material,...
