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Tracing the history of studies of the physical growth of children from the time of the Ancient Greeks onwards.
A revised edition of an established text on human growth and development from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective.
Offering a study of biological, biomedical and biocultural approaches, this book is suitable for researchers, professors and graduate students across the interdisciplinary area of human development. It is presented in the form of lectures to facilitate student programming.
One morning in 1969, out of the blue, I received a letter which both distressed and astonished me. It was from a Prof. S. R. Das in Calcutta, who requested me to accept, for eventual analysis, a mountain of anthropometric data he had accumulated, as he was ill and did not expect to survive to analyse it himself. The data provided the astonishment; twenty-two anthropometric characters recorded every six months or a year, over a period of 14 years, in a mixed longitudinal study of some 560 children, aged six months to twenty years. Most were in families with siblings also in the study, and every child was measured every time by S. R. Das himself. The archive was unique, combining the personal anthropometry of R. H. Whitehouse in the Harpenden Growth Study and the family approach of the Fels Growth Study. This was a study of which neither I, nor anyone of my acquaintance, had heard. Even in India, Prof. Das' work was scarcely known. It turned out Das was a scholarly man, quiet and unassuming, absolutely committed to his Sarsuna-Barisha Growth Study,just the obverse of the professional showman. Clearly this was not a request I could refuse, although I already had in hand enough projects to occupy Siva himself.
This book presents an anthropological, evolutionary and biocultural perspective to the study and interpretation of human growth. Based on courses which Dr Bogin teaches to a mixture of medical, nutrition and anthropology students, the book provides a synthesis of the forces that shaped the evolution of the human growth pattern, the biocultural factors that direct its expression, the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that regulate individual development and the biomathematical approaches needed to analyse and interpret human growth. The book begins by discussing the history of the study of human growth and the basic principles for the study of human development. Two chapters are devoted to the often neglected, but vitally important, subject of the evolution of the human pattern of growth, giving a comprehensive explanation for the functional and adaptive significance of human growth patterns. Later chapters explore the physiological, environmental and cultural reasons for population variation in growth; the genetic and endocrine factors that regulate the growth of individuals; and the mathematical and biological models of the process of human growth and development. A new model of growth regulation is presented that combines quantitative and qualitative elements from mathematics, molecular biology and neuroendocrine physiology. Pitched towards an audience of advanced undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology, biology, human sciences and psychology, this book should become a major text for the study of human growth.
Understanding the way in which individuals develop before birth, as babies, children and adolescents through to young and older adulthood towards death is an important part of any social work role. Being able to skilfully apply this understanding in real life practice situations is even more important, as purposeful translations of human development are at the heart of effective professional practice. Introducing students to emotional, psychological and social developmental theories of human growth before exploring in detail how these theories can be incorporated into practice, this book will ensure students have all the tools they need to not only understand but critically appraise and apply psychosocial theories early on in training and whilst on placement. With the help of real world case studies, summaries and tips for further study, it will show students how life course theories inter-relate and how they can make appropriate, purposeful translations of theory into skilled, professional practice.
Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to "the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time." To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.
Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology and the scientific study of how people grow and change over the course of a lifetime. Originally concerned with infants and children it expanded to include adolescence, adult development, ageing, and the entire lifespan. Beginning with Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the early focus of developmental psychology was on the maturation of children. Within the last three decades, researchers who study human development have expanded their focus to examine change across a broad range of topics including psycho-physiological processes; cognitive development involving areas such as problem solving, moral and conceptual understanding; language acquisition; social, personality, emotional development, self-concept and identity formation.The scientific study of human growth and development is important not only to psychology, but also to biology, sociology, anthropology, education, history and health care. Most important, however, are its practical applications. By better understanding how and why people change and grow, the knowledge can be applied to help people to reach their full potential.