David N. Sattler (College of Charleston), Geoffrey P. Kramer (Grand Valley State University), Virginia Shabatay (Palomar College), and Douglas A. Bernstein (University of Illinois) Houghton Mifflin Company 2000

Brief Contents

1  Birth, Infancy, and Toddlerhood
2  Early Childhood
3  Middle Childhood
4  Adolescence
5  Early Adulthood
6  Middle Adulthood
7  Late Adulthood
8  Dying, Death, and Bereavement

FROM THE PREFACE

Teaching lifespan development is an inherently intellectual and emotional enterprise. As professors, we are faced with the challenges of not only presenting theory and research clearly, but also conveying to students our own personal involvement and excitement about the field. We want to show how what we study in classroom relates to the world outside--in short, bring research and theory to life. Coupled with these challenges are other issues central to excellent teaching: (a) engaging students in critical thinking by having them reflect on and analyze difficult issues, such as disciplining and rewarding children, understanding how cognition changes over time, recognizing how persons of different ages and genders balance autonomy and interdependence; and (b) exposing students to the complexities of life events, ethical dilemmas, and cross-cultural problems, such as raising a child in a single-parent family, learning the customs of a new country but retaining an identity with one’s country of origin, struggling to develop normally when living in an community overrun with guns and drugs, coping in midlife when confronted by pressures to assist children financially and to take care of elderly parents. We suspect that learning is most rewarding when students have clear and vivid examples that relate theory and research findings to personal and interpersonal experiences. This book will help instructors meet this challenge life by showing students the vitality and complexity of the field of lifespan development.

Our goals for Lifespan Development in Context: Voices and Perspectives are the following:

• Promote students’ understanding and retention of lifespan development concepts and issues.
• Bring theory and research alive through dynamic and insightful first-person accounts and narratives that raise important and timely issues.
• Engage students in critical thinking about gender, multicultural, ethical, theoretical, and research issues.
• Expose students to the complexities of life events and ethical dilemmas.
• Broaden students' knowledge and awareness of the relationship among the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial developmental domains.

Chapter Organization

We designed this book to correspond to the organization of most lifespan development and developmental psychology textbooks, beginning with issues involving birth and infancy, continuing with childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and concluding with issues concerning dying and death. Each chapter contains between four and six narratives, and each narrative covers a different concept, issue, or topic within a given age period. Many narratives convey the complexities of lifespan development by showing how the cognitive, physical, and psychosocial domains interact. To help convey a longitudinal perspective, we occasionally present more than one selection by a given author to show developmental changes. Many selections highlight multicultural, gender, and ethical issues.

Pedagogical Features

Each chapter and article begins with an introduction that orients the reader and introduces the main concepts and issues presented. A concept guide at the beginning of each article also lists the main concepts and issues that are highlighted in the article. Where possible, we provide brief biographical information about the author.

After each article, we include a series of critical thinking questions and research questions.

• The critical thinking questions, titled Response and Analysis, ask students to: (a) reflect on and analyze the concepts and issues presented in the article; (b) connect material in the reading with material presented in their main textbook or during lecture; (c) explore their own reactions to and experiences with the issues; and (d) apply the information (e.g., propose an intervention program, make recommendations to a local school board).
• The research questions, titled Research, provide a solid foundation for learning methodology at an introductory level. A scenario first presents a brief discussion of a research study and methodological issues appropriate for students who have not had a course in research methods. Following the scenario, students are asked questions about how they might design the study, form hypotheses or test alternative hypotheses, or interpret results. The questions cover basic methodological concepts, such as identifying and measuring variables, constructing simple research designs, controlling for extraneous variables, and applying ethical research principles. These questions highlight the importance of empirical research in understanding development throughout the lifespan. Students find the research scenarios interesting, in part, because they correspond to issues raised in the readings.

Criteria for Selecting the Readings

We used several criteria in selecting the readings. First, each selection had to illustrate key concepts, issues, and topics that are presented in most lifespan development textbooks. Second, and equally important, each narrative had to be provocative: it had to arouse us, hold our attention, stir us with questions, and be of interest to students. We favored selections that broaden students’ perspectives on gender, ethnic, and cultural influences. We included a few selections that cover non-normative aspects of development (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) because some instructors cover these topics in their course. Finally, we chose and edited selections so that they were long enough to absorb readers in the writer's experiences but short enough for instructors to assign them as supplemental readings.

Extending the Borders: A Final Note

In his remarkable book, An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks reports that what he has found most effective in understanding both his patients and their illnesses is to get out of his office and into their lives, making "house calls at the far borders of human experience." In this way he comes to know them and their conditions from within, as persons, and not merely as patients who have been handed a diagnosis. It is our conviction that students, too, will better understand the issues in lifespan development whenever they extend the borders of the theoretical into the world of human experience. Such is the aim of this book.

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