ERIC Number: EJ1118124
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Nov
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
Designing for Development: Across the Scales of Time
Cole, Michael
Developmental Psychology, v52 n11 p1679-1689 Nov 2016
This essay traces the history of an activity designed to promote the intellectual and social development of elementary-age schoolchildren during the afterschool hours. Following in the footsteps of Urie Bronfenbrenner, I highlight his argument that just as all human development occurs in contexts of varying levels of inclusiveness and mutual interchange, human development occurs at intersecting scales of time that themselves vary in character and duration. The task of exploring Bronfenbrenner's idea confronts scholars interested in person-context coconstitutive processes with a difficult methodological requirement; they must study "simultaneously" the history of persons (at the microgenetic and ontogenetic time scales) as well the history of "the contexts of development" in which the persons participate. A project implementing such a study focused on the life course of the system of activity is described, followed by a discussion of the lessons to be learned from a temporally extensive study of persons developing in contexts that are themselves changing.
Descriptors: Intellectual Development, Social Development, Elementary School Students, After School Programs, Time, History, Environment, Experiments, Research Design, Research Methodology
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A