Developmental Theory

Defining Development

Past concepts of development involved separating or splitting development into different sources (e.g., nature or nurture). However, most contemporary developmental theories reject this split perspective and, instead, use concepts derived from the RDS metamodel linked to the process-relational paradigm to study the process connecting, in mutually influential ways, individuals and contexts. Overton explained that the process-relational paradigm focuses on development as a process that involves holism, relational analysis, and the use of multiple perspectives and multiple explanatory forms. From this perspective, the individual is viewed as an actively engaged producer of her or his development. As such, the process-relational paradigm is associated with RDS-based theories emphasizing mutually influential relations between individuals and their contexts, represented as individual ←→ context relations.

As noted by Glen H. Elder Jr., these relations vary across place and time (or history). The embeddedness of history within the developmental system (i.e., temporality) means that change is constant. Change may be stochastic (e.g., nonnormative life or historical events) or systematic (i.e., organized) across time and place. As described by Richard M. Lerner, temporality means that the potential for (at least relative) plasticity, or systematic changes in the structure and/or function of an individual’s developmental trajectory, exists across the life span. The concept of plasticity runs counter to the idea of fixity or the notion of development as controlled by genetic development.

RDS-based theories posit that the developmental process involves relations—or fusions—among multiple levels of organization or influence (e.g., biological, cultural, historical) in the developmental system or what Urie Bronfenbrenner termed the ecology of human development. The idea of this fusion is a basis of why contemporary developmental scientists conceptualize development as a process that involves individual ←→ context relations, with context engaging multiple levels of organization (e.g., individual, societal, cultural, historical). Jochen Brandtstädter described these reciprocal or bidirectional developmental regulations as adaptive when they benefit both the individual and her or his ecology. Because the potential for systematic change is a defining feature of RDS-based models, a key idea of RDS-based models is that means may be found to identify or promote individual ←→ context relations—adaptive developmental regulations—linked to positive human development.

...