In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts present career-long collections of what they judge to be their most interesting publications—extracts from books, key articles, research findings, and practical and theoretical contributions. Professor Richard M. Lerner has been prominent in the application of developmental science across the life span for half a century, investigating dynamic, relational development systems, and their potential impact on positive youth development (PYD) and social justice. In this collection, Professor Lerner presents the development of his theory of, and research about, relations between life-span human development and contextual or ecological change, exploring the mutually influential relations between humans and their peer, family, school, and community contexts. Including a specially written introduction, in which Professor Lerner reflects on the importance of mentorship and contextualises both the field and the evolution of his wide-ranging career, this collection will be a valuable resource for students and researchers of developmental psychology.

Individuals as Producers of Their Development: A Life-Span Perspective provides an assessment of the usefulness of viewing the individual as an active contributor to his or her development. It extends the breadth of organism-environment reciprocities beyond those involved with the child and family. On the one hand, this extension involves a consideration of the role of evolutionary biological processes; on the other, it pertains to the broader ecology of human development—the social network lying outside the family, and the physical environmental contexts of development. Person-context reciprocities linked to variables that may play their greatest role in the extrafamilial context are also considered. Variables such as physical attractiveness, race, and physical handicap are examples of those discussed in this regard. Finally, because of the greater scope of the analysis, a potentially greater data base is examined in a search for documentation of the presence and role of dynamic person-context interactions.

Individual Development and Social Change: Explanatory Analysis represents a convergence of three lines of emphasis now visible in developmental research and theory building. The three are (1) the life course as a focus for the study of development and social change, and their interrelationships; (2) the life-span orientation to the study of individual development, with its acknowledgment of the salience of contextual features for understanding development; and (3) the growth of methodological innovations that provide more appropriate and powerful ways of exploiting data gathered to describe and explain developmental change processes. The book opens with a study on how major cultural change originates and unfolds over time. This is followed by separate chapters on the use of sequential designs for explanatory analyses; evolutionary aspects of social and individual development; the concepts of the theory of causal and weak causal regressive dependence; and the concepts of age, period, and cohort from the perspective of developmental psychology. Subsequent chapters examine development and aging as lifelong processes of historical populations; the methodological integration of natural and cultural science perspectives in developmental psychology; and application of the multifaceted methodology to the mutuality of constraint between sociocultural group and individual dynamics.

Parents, Children, and Adolescents presents an integrative perspective of the parent-child relationship within several contexts. You can expand your empirical and theoretical knowledge of the parent-child relationship and child development through the book's unusually holistic, theoretical perspective that integrates three main frameworks: interactional theories on parents, children, and development; contextual (ecological) models; and behavior genetics.This insightful book's empirical scope is broader than that of most books in that it considers the parent-child relationship throughout the life course as well as within a great variety of contexts, including interactions with sibling and peers, at school, in their neighborhoods, and with professionals. You'll gain immeasurable knowledge about: parents'child-rearing styles and how they are affected by environmental variables the interaction between parents and children, and between their personalities behavior genetics as one of the explanatory frameworks for the role of genetics and environment negative child outcomes--emotional problems, conduct disorders, and delinquency poverty and other stressors affecting parents and children problematic-abusive, emotionally disturbed, alcoholic parents siblings and peers as contexts for the parent-child dyad the effect of the school system on the family, with a focus on minority families family structure--divorce, remarriage, and families headed by never-married mothers adolescent mothers and their own mothers the psychogenetic limitations on parental influence and cultural roadblocks to parental moral authorityComplete with an Instructor's Manual, Parents, Children, and Adolescents is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate classes in family studies and human development, sociology of the family, interdisciplinary developmental psychology, and social work classes that need a thorough perspective on the parent-child relationship. Professionals and scholars in these fields seeking an interdisciplinary framework as well as research suggestions and incisive critiques of traditional perspectives will also find this innovative book a valuable addition to their reading lists.

Opening with a discussion on the need to integrate self-regulation processes and to create a life-span oriented framework of these processes, this volume explores several perspectives in the current scholarship. Chapter contributors examine theoretical concepts including Vygotsky/Luria Insights in the Development of Executive Functions Self-Regulation and Academic Achievement in Elementary School Children Influences of Children?s and Adolescents? Action-Control Processes on School Achievement, Peer Relationships, and Coping with Challenging Life Events Intentional Self-Regulation, Ecological Assets, and Thriving in Adolescence: A Developmental Systems Model and a Life-Span, Relational, Public Health Model of Self- Regulation: Impact on Individual and Community Health The volume concludes with New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development series editor-in-chief Reed W. Larson discussing the challenges reported by youth working on arts, technology, and social justice projects in organized programs and how they learn to address them. This is the 133nd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. The mission of this series is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in the field of child and adolescent development. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic, and is edited by an expert or experts on that topic.

Understanding developmental processes in the individual as well as in aggregates of individuals is an important aim of many of the social and behavioral sciences. This book presents a theoretical framework for this endeavor - an architecture for the study of human development across different disciplines. This architecture describes two major sources of human development (biology and culture) and posits three central developmental mechanisms (selection, optimization, and compensation).