Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Volume 4, Ecological Settings and Processes (PDF)

The essential reference for human development theory, updated
and reconceptualized

The Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental
Science, a four-volume reference, is the field-defining work to
which all others are compared. First published in 1946, and now in
its Seventh Edition, the Handbook has long been considered
the definitive guide to the field of developmental science.

Volume 4: Ecological Settings and Processes in Developmental
Systems is centrally concerned with the people, conditions, and
events outside individuals that affect children and their
development. To understand children's development it is both
necessary and desirable to embrace all of these social and physical
contexts. Guided by the relational developmental systems
metatheory, the chapters in the volume are ordered them in a manner
that begins with the near proximal contexts in which children find
themselves and moving through to distal contexts that influence
children in equally compelling, if less immediately manifest, ways.
The volume emphasizes that the child's environment is complex,
multi-dimensional, and structurally organized into interlinked
contexts; children actively contribute to their development; the
child and the environment are inextricably linked, and
contributions of both child and environment are essential to
explain or understand development.

* Understand the role of parents, other family members, peers,
and other adults (teachers, coaches, mentors) in a child's
development

* Discover the key neighborhood/community and institutional
settings of human development

* Examine the role of activities, work, and media in child and
adolescent development

* Learn about the role of medicine, law, government, war and
disaster, culture, and history in contributing to the processes of
human development

The scholarship within this volume and, as well, across the four
volumes of this edition, illustrate that developmental science is
in the midst of a very exciting period. There is a paradigm shift
that involves increasingly greater understanding of how to
describe, explain, and optimize the course of human life for
diverse individuals living within diverse contexts. This
Handbook is the definitive reference for educators,
policy-makers, researchers, students, and practitioners in human
development, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and
neuroscience.