This document summarizes several theories of human development from an integrative perspective, including: 1) Contextualism, which rejects universal patterns of development and generalizations in favor of understanding individuals within relationships and settings. 2) Life span cohort models that view development as an open, situated, and successive process by studying groups over time. 3) Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective that development depends on cultural and historical contexts through apprenticeship, guided participation, and appropriation. 4) Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory describing environmental levels from micro to macro that influence development. 5) Postmodern perspectives like Gilligan's stages of care ethics focusing on transitioning

1. Theories of Human Development
Integrative Perspectives
THE CONTEXTUALISTIC WORLDVIEW – Part
IV
Dale Goldhaer

2. Contextualism…
1. Purpose of the study of such events is to discover
what the events themselves say about the web of
interactions that create and maintain the events and
about the role of the individual within the matrix of
relationships
2. The search for objective reality is an illusion
3. No universal patterns of development
4. No intention to generalize, abstract, or to propose
universal arguments
5. No directional concept of development
6. Different behaviors in different settings

3. Three Perspectives
1. Life span cohort models of development
2. Vygotsky and the Social-Cultural Perspective
3. Post-modern perspectives
pp. 2

4. Life span cohort models
of development
Glen Elder

5. Life Span Cohort Models
1. Emergence of models traced to 3 related
developments: (a) the changing demographics
of old age, (b) the aging of the participants in
the longitudinal studies begun in 1920s and
1930s, and ( c)the growing interest in
multidisciplinary research
2. Three interrelated basic assumptions that
underlie life span cohort models:
 Development as an open process
 Development as a situated process
 Development as a successive sequence

6. Elder’s Life Course Paradigm – Four Themes
1
4
3
2

7. Vygotsky and the
Sociocultural
perspective

8. Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934)
Theoretical Argument
1.Ontogenetic Evolution: Child to Adult
• To understand the developmental status of an
individual first requires an understanding of the
developmental history of that individual
• 4 step developmental sequence: Natural or
primitive stage, naïve psychology, external
signs, and ingrowth stage
2.Cultural Evolution: Primitive to Cultured
• To understand the developmental history of that
individual first requires an understanding of the
historical evolution of that individual’s culture
3.Phylogenetic Evolution: Ape to Human
• To understand the historical evolution of that
individual’s culture first requires the phylogenetic
evolution of that individual’s species

9. Major Theme in Vgotsky’s Theory

10. Barbara Rogoff’s Theoretical Perspectove
• Development is the progress children make
as they attempt to acquire culturally defined
ideals of mature thought and action
• The culture structures the individual even
as the individual’s actions redefine the
culture
• Three levels of the sociocultural context:
1. Apprenticeship – Level of the
community
2. Guided Participation – Level of
individual interactions
3. Process of Appropriation – Level of the
cultural system

11. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) developed the ecological systems theory to
explain how everything in a child and the child's environment affects how a
child grows and develops. He labeled different aspects or levels of the
environment that influence children's development, including the microsystem,
the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem. The microsystem is
the small, immediate environment the child lives in.

12. Postmodern
Perspectives

13. Gilligan's Stages of the Ethic of
Care
Approximate
Stage Goal
Age Range
Goal is individual
not listed Preconventional
survival
Transition is from selfishness -- to -- responsibility to others
Self sacrifice is
not listed Conventional
goodness
Transition is from goodness -- to -- truth that she is a
person too
Principle of
nonviolence: do
maybe never Postconventional
not hurt others or
self