Evolutionary Perspectives on Child Development and Education

Part 1   Development, Play, and Exploration in Early Learning.- The Adaptive Value of Cognitive Immaturity: Applications of Evolutionary Developmental Psychology to Early Education.- Teaching: Natural or Cultural?.- Children's Natural Ways of Educating Themselves Still Work-Even for the Three Rs.- Object Use in Childhood: Development and Possible Functions.- Guided Play: A Solution to the Play versus Learning Dichotomy.- Part 2  Social and Moral Development.- Eight Myths of Child Social Development: An Evolutionary Approach to Power, Aggression, and Social Competence.- Adolescent Bullying in Schools: An Evolutionary Perspective.- Fairness: What It Isn't, What It Is, and What It Might Be For.- Part 3 Evolved Biases and Cognition and Learning in the Modern World.- Evolution and Children's Cognitive and Academic Development.- Adaptive Memory: Fitness-Relevant "Tunings" Help Drive Learning and Remembering.- Adapting Evolution Education to a Warming Climate of Teaching and Learning.- Cognitive Load Theory, Evolutionary Educational Psychology and Instructional Design.- Beyond Academic Performance: The Effects of an Evolution-Informed School Environment on Student Performance and Wellbeing.

 

David C. Geary is currently a Curators' Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri. His work spans a broad range of topics from children's mathematical cognition and development to the evolution of sex differences. He's written four sole authored books, Children's Mathematical Development (1994), Male, Female (1998, 2nd edition, 2010), Origin of Mind (2005), and Evolution of Vulnerability (2015), one co-authored book, Sex Differences (2008), and is co-editing a five volume series on Mathematical Cognition and Learning, the first two volumes of which have been released; Evolutionary Origins and Early Development of Number Processing (2015) and  Development of mathematical cognition: Neural substrates and genetic influences (2016). In addition, he has published about 250 journal articles and chapters and has hadextensive funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for his empirical research. He served on the President's National Mathematics Advisory Panel from 2006 to 2008 and chaired the learning processes task group, and was appointed by President Bush to the National Board of Advisors for the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (2007 to 2010). Geary is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, received a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, is a co-recipient of the G. A. Miller Award from the American Psychological Association, and has been a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University.

 Daniel B. Berch is Professor of Educational Psychology and Applied Developmental Science at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education. Prior to this position, he was Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the Curry School, and before that served as

"In their new book, Evolutionary Perspectives on Child Development and Education, editors David Geary and Daniel Berch have compiled chapters that offer ideas on 'how an evolutional approach can enhance educational outcomes and inform educational policies' ... . Researchers and graduate students interested in improving education should find this book challenging, valuable, and thought-provoking." (Patricia T. Ashton, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 61 (51), December, 2016)