Children’s Development in Contexts: Theoretical Shortcomings and Advances�

CYNTHIA GARCIA COLL, PHD

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Outline of Talk �

• Relevant theorists 19^th-20^th century
• What was Child Development like in the 1960’s…..
• My own experience…1970’s….
• Empirical evidence
• Contemporary theories: 20^th-21^st century
• Empirical evidence
• What is Child Development like in the 2000’s…..

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The Science of Child Development

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THEORY HYPOTHESES

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RESEARCH EVIDENCE

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THEORY GETS CONFIRMED,

REVISED OR NEW THEORY EMERGES

“There is nothing more practical than a good theory”

Kurt Lewin, 1952

Where do we come from?� Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Where do we come from?� Charles Darwin

• CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• Systematic observation of organisms in their contexts
• Progression toward complexity and
• Systems are intertwined
• Organisms are intertwined
• Phylogeny vs ontogeny

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Where do we come from?� Sigmund Freud (1856-1952)

Where do we come from?� Sigmund Freud

• CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• IMPORTANCE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD FOR ADULT MENTAL HEALTH
• IMPORTANCE OF EARLY TRAUMA
• CRISIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GROW
• IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER-CHILD BOND
• IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY CONTEXT
• IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS OF AGE

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Where do we come from?� Arnold Gesell (1880-1961)

• Postulated a maturational-developmental theory
• Observed and documented patterns in the way children develop
• Children go through similar and predictable sequences
• Environment causes individual differences only in rate of maturation
• Evaluations of development may be warranted by psychologists, educators, and pediatricians

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Where do we come from?� Arnold Gesell

Where do we come from?� Arnold Gesell

• The Gesell Developmental Schedules (1925)
• Claimed that an appraisal of the developmental status of infants and young children could be made
• Evaluations of development may be warranted by psychologists, educators, and pediatricians
• Established normative trends for four areas of growth and development: Motor, Adaptive (Cognitive), Language, and Personal-Social behavior

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Where do we come from?� Arnold Gesell

•  CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• Relationship between behavior and brain, and appreciation of and investment in the potential of the rapidly developing young brain
• First theorist to systematically “study” the stages of development as predictable, normative growth among children
• Mostly maturational with environment/organic variations
• Recognition of the full range of unique developmental and environmental needs of young children
• Child’s developmental age may be different from his or her chronological age

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Where do we come from?� Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

• A biologist interested in the origin of knowledge
• Importance of cognitive development
• Child as a scientist
• Immediate environmental demands and biological maturation
• Universal processes and stages
• Close observations of his three children

Where do we come from?� Jean Piaget

Where do we come from?� Jean Piaget

Where do we come from?� Jean Piaget

• CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• Cognitive revolution
• Systematic observation of children
• Mechanisms of development and Stages
• Maturational and universal
• Complexity and simplicity of development

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What is Child Development? (1960’s)

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• Child Development refers to the process through which human beings typically grow and mature from infancy through adulthood. The different aspects of growth and development that are measured include physical growth, cognitive growth, and social emotional growth. Child development focuses on the changes that take place in humans as they mature from birth to about age 17.

Stages of development:

• Infancy
• Early Childhood
• Middle Childhood
• Adolescence

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• The traditional "nativist" perspectives assume that developmental changes are embodied in the genes, or represented in neural programs. Experience can modify maturational rate but it cannot introduce qualitatively new forms.

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�1970’s - my own experiences

• Came to USA to attend graduate school In Developmental Psychology:

-texts, theories, interpretation of “facts”…nothing about culture…

generic child and mother

• Ex. teenage pregnancy, childbearing and parenting is problematic

-But my grandmother was a teenage mother…was she that bad?

Hmm…culture really matters…findings in Puerto Rico

• Attend another PhD program…but…culture is “elsewhere”, not here…
• Normative is White, middle class: we can extrapolate from our studies to any other population
• Minor in Anthropology…

Robert Levine & John Whitting

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1970’s - my own experiences

• As a junior scholar and consumer of Child Development literature, realized that the problem was systemic

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• When deficiencies were found…i.e. low academic achievement, high rates of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, violence…these were INTERPRETED as due to…
• Either genes (Jensen) or cultural deprivation (progressive stance)

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• These interpretations were done even though these minoritized populations were subject to racism, segregation to poor resourced environments and poverty and… most individuals that were found to have these “deviations” i.e. were WHITE !

Study of culture…. a mess…

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• Culture is “elsewhere”
• Chapter 13 phenomena
• Cultural differences in USA seeing as normative vs deficient
• However, civil rights movements and demographic shifts in USA creates pressure; also globalization…how to understand and intervene with ”the other”
• Need new theories…

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The science of Child Development: Nature-Nurture controversy

Empirical evidence: both biology and contexts really matter

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• Universality of stages questioned
• Importance of culture and socioeconomic context
• Importance of parents and families
• Importance of experiences in schools and neighborhoods
• Integration of developmental processes and inputs
• Importance of environment for brain growth
• Prenatal development
• Epigenetics

Contemporary theories*� Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

• Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development
• Social learning comes before cognitive development
• Children construct knowledge actively through social interactions
• Cognitive development advances through social interactions with a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)
• Scaffolding refers to the temporary support given to a child by an MKO
• Best learning occurs in the Zone of Proximal development (ZPD)

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*When the work was translated into English (1960’s)

Contemporary theories� Lev Vygotsky

Contemporary theories� Lev Vygotsky

• CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• Importance of the social interactions in both cognitive and psychosocial development.
• Attention shifted from individual onto larger interactional units (parents, teachers, siblings, etc. and society as a whole)
• Attention to cultural variability, stating that the development of children who are in one culture or subculture, may be totally different from children who are from other cultures.
• Therefore, it would not be fitting to utilize the developmental experiences of children from one culture as a norm for children from other cultures.
• Barbara Rogoff and Thomas Weisner

Contemporary theories� Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)

• Bioecological  systems theory
• Development is a function of varied systems of the environments and their interrelationships
• Both biology and environment shape development
• Environments child (also Arnold Sameroff)
• Importance of studying children in multiple environments
• Organizes contexts of development into five levels of external influence

Contemporary theories� Urie Bronfenbrenner

Contemporary theories� Urie Bronfenbrenner

• CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCES
• Bioecological
• Many contexts matter, not only the immediate
• Importance of interdisciplinary work
• CULTURE IS INCLUDED!!!

but….

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Contemporary theories� Velez Agosto et al, 2017

Contemporary theories�Garcia Coll et al (1996)

Integrative Model for the Study of Developmental Competencies in Minority children

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���Empirical evidence: the impact of COVID in minoritized populations���

• Overrepresentation in…
• positive COVID-19, hospitalizations and deaths
• job and income loss and economic uncertainty
• food and housing insecurity
• serious disruptions in child care and education
• failure to receive the Cares Act stimulus checks
• receiving more racial/ethnic overt discrimination

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Empirical evidence: the impact of COVID in minoritized populations

Empirical evidence: the impact of COVID in minoritized populations

�Empirical evidence: the impact of public policies on immigrant children�

• The importance of receiving contexts in academic outcomes
• Garcia Coll & Marks ( 2009): heterogeneity of outcomes within immigrant populations in two northeastern states as a function of each group’s migration history and school context
• Filindra, Blanding & García Coll (2011): heterogeneity of outcomes in the United sates as a function of whether states have pro immigrant state policies
• Marks et al & García Coll (2018): heterogeneity of outcomes as a function of pro child health European Union country policies

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What is Child Development?

• No longer adheres to the notion of stages of development
• Development has to be observed, explained and measured in context
• We are all CULTURAL beings
• All institutions/micro systems are cultural
• Poverty, inequality, racism and other sources of oppression
• Contexts have to be taken into account in assessments and interventions
• Development starts from pre conception
• Development happens throughout lifespan

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The good, the bad and the ugly…

Where do we go from here?

💡 🔌 ⚙️