Life-span Developmental Systems: Meta-theory, Methodology and the Study of Applied Problems

Everything you always wanted to know about theories, meta-theories, methods, and interventions but didn’t realize you needed to ask.

This innovative textbook takes advanced undergraduate and graduate students "behind the curtain" of standard developmental science, so they can begin to appreciate the generative value and methodological challenges of a lifespan developmental systems perspective.

It envisions applied developmental science as focused on ways to use knowledge about human development to help solve societal problems in real-life contexts, and considers applied developmental research to be purpose driven, field based, community engaged, and oriented toward efforts to optimize development. Based on the authors’ more than 25 years of teaching, this text is designed to help researchers and their students intentionally create a cooperative learning community, full of arguments, doubts, and insights, that can facilitate their own internal paradigm shifts, one student at a time.

With the aid of extensive online supplementary materials, students of developmental psychology as well as students in other psychological subdisciplines (such as industrial-organizational, social, and community psychology) and applied professions that rely on developmental training (such as education, social work, counseling, nursing, health care, and business) will find this to be an invaluable guidebook and toolbox for conceptualizing and studying applied problems from a lifespan developmental systems perspective.

Ellen A. Skinner, trained as a lifespan developmentalist, is a leading expert on the development of children’s motivation, coping, and academic identity in school. She is a Professor of Human Development and Chair of the Psychology Department at Portland State University.

Thomas A. Kindermann is a lifespan developmental psychologist and Professor in the Psychology Department at Portland State University. He is a leading expert on children’s peer affiliations in school and how they can foster or undermine children’s academic development.

Andrew J. Mashburn, a Professor of Developmental Psychology at Portland State University, is a leading expert on the transition to kindergarten. He conducts research to describe, explain, and promote young children’s school readiness and long-term academic success.