Education and Applied Developmental Science

The Historical Intersection of Developmental Theory and Education

From the early 20th century through the mid-1940s, developmental psychologists proposed a descriptive and normative framework for human development. They assumed that behavior was a function of structure and that humans developed in a predictable way. A number of developmental scientists believed that maturationally based changes unfold spontaneously, independent of learning and context. These theories of maturational change encouraged schools to cultivate a developmental approach to instruction.

The middle part of the 20th century saw the rise and influence of broader models of human development as well as the emergence of theories that focused on specific domains of development, such as Jean Piaget's focus on cognitive development, Erikson's focus on psychosocial development, and Kohlberg's focus on moral development (Lerner, 2002). While the focus on specific domains of development, such as cognition and affect, has been a valuable contribution to the field of developmental psychology, this single-minded focus on a particular domain has often [Page 388]resulted in practitioners addressing these domains in an isolated way. Within the field of education, the domain of cognition has been a central focus and has affected educational policy and practice much more widely than any other domain, including affective development. The belief that different domains of development can be addressed separately has been particularly evident in the way that education and other services to children have been organized. With their primary focus on cognitive development, educators have left the domain of socioemotional development to other professions, such as psychology and medicine.

The split between cognitive and affective domains has had a profound effect on recent educational reform efforts. Educators and policymakers have believed that a laserlike focus on teaching and learning in the classroom would result in significant academic improvement. Most large school systems devoted few, if any, resources to socioemotional prevention and intervention efforts. However, as the achievement gap between poor students of color and other students continues to remain wide, educators and policymakers are beginning to acknowledge something that teachers have known for a long time, namely, that academic achievement is affected by the contextual conditions of children, including the environment of their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. In addition to cognitive development, children's socioemotional and physical development are critical to their learning.

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