How Theories and Perspectives Inform our Thinking about Human Development

Essay by smisher September 2009

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AbstractThis essay investigates how theories and perspectives inform our thinking of human development. A number of various theories are briefly analysed and critiqued to answer three sub questions of human development - What are developing humans like? What causes development? What course does development follow? These theories and perspectives inform our thinking of human development by touching on the developmental themes - active/passive, nature/nurture, and continuous/discontinuous and are the main focus of answering these three questions. They will show that theories have evolved and some have collaborated and all have contributed to our thinking about human development.

How Theories and Perspectives Inform our Thinking about Human DevelopmentIt has been said by Desmond Morris (1977) that human's greatest gift is their immense capacity for learning from their environment. From this view it has been argued that as a result of this one inborn ability, there is no need for any others.

On the contrary others argue that human's are born with innate patterns that influence one's behaviour. These two contradicting views is just a small look into the controversies surrounding human development. Theories of human development can be classed into one or more of the developmental themes; active/passive, nature/nurture, continuous/discontinuous. It is these controversies that have been the central issue to human developmentalists and those different theories resolve different developmental controversies in different ways (Shaffer & Kipp, 2007). Theories have evolved and collaborated and all have contributed to our thinking about human development. To best show how theories and perspectives inform our thinking about human development it is best to subdivide this into three separate questions - What are developing humans like? This touches on the active/passive developmental theme. What causes development? Which touches on the nature/nurture developmental theme? What course does development follow? Which touches on the continuous/discontinuous developmental theme?What...