Discovering Successful Pathways In Children S Development

Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development provides a new perspective on the study of childhood and family life. Successful development is enhanced when communities provide meaningful life pathways that children can seek out and engage. Successful pathways include both a culturally valued direction for development and competence in skills that matter for a child's subsequent success as a person as well as a student, parent, worker, or citizen. To understand successful pathways requires a mix of qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic methods—the state of the art for research practice among developmentalists, educators, and policymakers alike. This volume includes new studies of minority and immigrant families, school achievement, culture, race and gender, poverty, identity, and experiments and interventions meant to improve family and child contexts. Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development will be of enormous value to everyone interested in the issues of human development, education, and social welfare, and among professionals charged with the task of improving the lives of children in our communities.

When can contexts and diversity be resources, rather than risks, for children's developmental pathways? Scholars, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly realize that middle childhood matters as a time when children's pathways diverge, as they meet new and overlapping contexts they must navigate on their way to adolescence and adulthood. This volume shines new light on this important transition by tracing how these contexts -- cultural, economic, historical, political, and social -- can support or undermine children's pathways, and how children's own actions and the actions of those around them shape these pathways. With a focus on demographic changes taking place in the U.S., the volume also maps how experiences of diversity, reflecting culture, ethnicity, gender, and social class, matter for children's life contexts and options. Chapters by a team of social scientists in the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways through Middle Childhood present the fruits of ten years of research on these issues with diverse cultural and ethnic communities across the U.S. These include: *a set of models and measures that trace how contexts and diversity evolve and interact over time, with an epilogue that aligns and compares them; *surprising new findings, quantitative and qualitative, with cases showing how children and families shape and are affected by their individual, recreational, institutional, and cultural experiences; and *applications to policy and practice for diverse children and families. The importance of these new models, methods, findings, and applications is the topic of commentaries by distinguished scholars with both U.S. and international perspectives. The book is intended for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, as well as students in psychology, sociology, and education.

In this book the contributors introduce all the key qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and methods and draw readers into a community of researchers engaged in reflection on the research process

Multiculturalism is a prevalent worldwide societal phenomenon. Aspects of our modern life, such as migration, economic globalization, multicultural policies, and cross-border travel and communication have made intercultural contacts inevitable. High numbers of multicultural individuals (23-43% of the population by some estimates) can be found in many nations where migration has been strong (e.g., Australia, U.S., Western Europe, Singapore) or where there is a history of colonization (e.g., Hong Kong). Many multicultural individuals are also ethnic and cultural minorities who are descendants of immigrants, majority individuals with extensive multicultural experiences, or people with culturally mixed families; all people for whom identification and/or involvement with multiple cultures is the norm. Despite the prevalence of multicultural identity and experiences, until the publication of this volume, there has not yet been a comprehensive review of scholarly research on the psychological underpinning of multiculturalism. The Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity fills this void. It reviews cutting-edge empirical and theoretical work on the psychology of multicultural identities and experiences. As a whole, the volume addresses some important basic issues, such as measurement of multicultural identity, links between multilingualism and multiculturalism, the social psychology of multiculturalism and globalization, as well as applied issues such as multiculturalism in counseling, education, policy, marketing and organizational science, to mention a few. This handbook will be useful for students, researchers, and teachers in cultural, social, personality, developmental, acculturation, and ethnic psychology. It can also be used as a source book in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on identity and multiculturalism, and a reference for applied psychologists and researchers in the domains of education, management, and marketing.

The essential reference for human development theory, updatedand reconceptualized The Handbook of Child Psychology and DevelopmentalScience, a four-volume reference, is the field-defining work towhich all others are compared. First published in 1946, and now inits Seventh Edition, the Handbook has long been consideredthe definitive guide to the field of developmental science. Volume 1, Theory and Method, presents a rich mix ofclassic and contemporary theoretical perspectives, but the dominantviews throughout are marked by an emphasis on the dynamic interplayof all facets of the developmental system across the life span,incorporating the range of biological, cognitive, emotional,social, cultural, and ecological levels of analysis. Examples ofthe theoretical approaches discussed in the volume include thosepertinent to human evolution, self regulation, the development ofdynamic skills, and positive youth development. The research,methodological, and applied implications of the theoretical modelsdiscussed in the volume are presented. Understand the contributions of biology, person, and context todevelopment within the embodied ecological system Discover the relations among individual, the social world,culture, and history that constitute human development Examine the methods of dynamic, developmental research Learn person-oriented methodological approaches to assessingdevelopmental change The scholarship within this volume and, as well, across the fourvolumes of this edition, illustrate that developmental science isin the midst of a very exciting period. There is a paradigm shiftthat involves increasingly greater understanding of how todescribe, explain, and optimize the course of human life fordiverse individuals living within diverse contexts. ThisHandbook is the definitive reference for educators,policy-makers, researchers, students, and practitioners in humandevelopment, psychology, sociology, anthropology, andneuroscience.

Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 57 presents theoretical and empirical scholarship illuminating how race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status intersect to shape children's development and developmental contexts. Rather than focusing on the additive effects of race/ethnicity and SES, which is typical (and a limitation) in the developmental literature, the scholarship in this book considers how the factors and processes shaping the development of children of color can differ markedly across the socioeconomic continuum. This collection illustrates how applying an intersectional lens to developmental science can yield unique insights into the challenges confronting and assets buoying both minority and majority children's healthy development. This volume's contributors include renowned developmental scholars working at the forefront of their fields The volume's multidisciplinary focus has relevance to developmental psychologists, sociologists, and family scientists and those whose interests and work fall under the purview of those disciplines This volume examines multiple dimensions of and multiple factors shaping children's development

Societal Contexts of Child Development provides comprehensive literature reviews for six broad contextual influences on children's development and addresses these contexts from an applied research perspective.

Communication and Language play a foundational role in the overall pursuit of equity and social justice in education. This volume does not take up the majority and dominant views which are especially visible in developments in the field of linguistic education and English language instruction. Rather, it travels the path less followed, to attend to the language and communication concerns of populations that possess little political and economic power and whose academic and social needs are often neglected. The volume attends to the role of language acquisition in “levelling the playing field” to enable ALL students to develop into contented family members, good neighbours, and productive citizens in an increasingly diverse and global society. The issue takes on far greater importance, as it gradually comes to light that the capacity for language corresponds to and even implements the ability to interrelate with others. Far from being a mere utilitarian tool this is now appreciated as constituting the realm of abilities to take the position of the other, to share a field of meaning, and to project and pursue truly humane and indeed inter-humane attitudes and goals. In this light communication and language, whether verbal or preverbal, constitute the field in which one first attains and progressively evolves one’s humanity. In this volume, scholars from ten different countries examine issues related to the influence of language and communication patterns on equity and social justice in the lives of disadvantaged and marginalized populations around the globe (i.e., educational opportunities, community stability, economic prospects, and political power). Critical issues addressed include: education in traditional, national, or Western languages; language integration through dialects and code switching; non-verbal academic engagement through art, signing, and photography; cross-cultural engagement through language equity in higher education; and the influence of Western language acquisition on the self-concepts of disadvantaged students. As the succession of sections in this volume makes clear, success in the realization of language and communication abilities is not simple. Rather it reflects human life and interaction in all its complexity.