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.

This book addresses cultural variability in children’s social worlds, examining the acquisition, development, and use of culturally relevant social competencies valued in diverse cultural contexts. It discusses the different aspects of preschoolers’ social competencies that allow children – including adopted, immigrant, or at-risk children – to create and maintain relationships, communicate, and to get along with other people at home, in daycare or school, and other situations. Chapters explore how children’s social competencies reflect the features of the social worlds in which they live and grow. In addition, chapters examine the extent that different cultural value orientations manifest in children’s social functioning and escribes how parents in autonomy-oriented cultures tend to value different social skills than parents with relatedness or autonomous-relatedness orientations. The book concludes with recommendations for future research directions. Topics featured in this book include: Gender development in young children. Peer interactions and relationships during the preschool years. Sibling interactions in western and non-western cultural groups. The roles of grandparents in child development. Socialization and development in refugee children. Child development within institutional care. Children’s Social Worlds in Cultural Context is a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians/practitioners, and graduate students in developmental psychology, child and school psychology, social work, cultural anthropology, family studies, and education.

Children are the foundation of the United States, and supporting them is a key component of building a successful future. However, millions of children face health inequities that compromise their development, well-being, and long-term outcomes, despite substantial scientific evidence about how those adversities contribute to poor health. Advancements in neurobiological and socio-behavioral science show that critical biological systems develop in the prenatal through early childhood periods, and neurobiological development is extremely responsive to environmental influences during these stages. Consequently, social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors significantly affect a child's health ecosystem and ability to thrive throughout adulthood. Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity builds upon and updates research from Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (2017) and From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000). This report provides a brief overview of stressors that affect childhood development and health, a framework for applying current brain and development science to the real world, a roadmap for implementing tailored interventions, and recommendations about improving systems to better align with our understanding of the significant impact of health equity.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This provocative new work on children's development in context presents recent theoretical developments and research findings that have been generated by sociocultural theory. Sociocultural theory began with the work of L.S. Vygotsky and his colleagues but has been significantly expanded and modified recent years. Since the late 1970s, sociocultural theory has challenged existing notions of cognitive development by suggesting that psychological functioning is specific to its social context and is dependent on the mastery of culturally defined modes of speaking, thinking, and acting. For this volume, the editors have assembled a list of contributors noted for their distinguished work in sociocultural theory and research. Taken together, they offer a multifaceted perspective on an emerging research paradigm and argue for a fundamental reconceptualization of mind and its development. Three main themes are explored in detail: discourse and learning in classroom practice, interpersonal relations in formal and informal education, and the institutional context of learning. Research findings are consistently discussed in terms of their theoretical implications. The book includes three commentary chapters and an afterword that propose future directions for sociocultural research. This book will be of interest to a wide range of researchers, educators, and students concerned with the theory and practice of developmental, educational, social, and cognitive psychology.

These companion volumes bring together research and theoretical work that addresses the relations between social context and the development of children. They allow for the in-depth discussion of a number of vital metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodological issues that have emerged as a result of increased investigation in these areas. For example: Which methodological and statistical procedures are appropriate and applicable to studies of social context and processes of development? Should the nature of social context be reconceptualized as something more than different levels of some social independent variable? Are theories of development that do not consider social context incomplete? Will the increasingly finer definitions of social context lead to extreme situationism and contextualism? As developmental theory and investigation continues to address relationships between social and cognitive development, it becomes increasingly important that issues concerning social context be elaborated and discussed.

This Handbook presents current research on children and youth in ethnic minority families. It reflects the development currently taking place in the field of social sciences research to highlight the positive adaptation of minority children and youth. It offers a succinct synthesis of where the field is and where it needs to go. It brings together an international group of leading researchers, and, in view of globalization and increased migration and immigration, it addresses what aspects of children and youth growing in ethnic minority families are universal across contexts and what aspects are more context-specific. The Handbook examines the individual, family, peers, and neighborhood/policy factors that protect children and promote positive adaptation. It examines the factors that support children’s social integration, psychosocial adaptation, and external functioning. Finally, it looks at the mechanisms that explain why social adaptation occurs.