Development concepts and applications

Developmental Processes Across the Life Span With Diverse Sociocultural Contexts

The objective of this study is to identify development processes across the life span with diverse sociocultural contexts and to demonstrate theoretical comprehension and application in psychotherapy in order to identify theoretical strengths and weaknesses based on the setting and/or client population specific to child behavior. Finally, this work will demonstrate basic knowledge of the range of normal an abnormal behaviors and child developmental processes. The work of Havighurst (1971) entitled 'Characteristics of Development Task' reports that living is a process beginning with birth and ending with death, which is, comprised of people "working their way through from stage of development to another, by solving their problems in each stage.") When the individual does not complete a task, which results in unhappiness as well as "disapproval by society and problems in later tasks." (1971, p.1) Six primary stages of the human life are identified in the work of Havighurst including those as follows:

(1) Infancy & early childhood (Birth till 6)

(2) Middle childhood (6-12)

(3) Adolescence (13-18)

(4) Early Adulthood (19-30)

(5) Middle Age (30-60)

(6) Later maturity (60 and over (Havighurst, 1971, p.1)

The work of Lam entitled "Language, Literacy, and the Immigrant Subject" examines how "transborder social networking and cultural flows in Internet communications" have resulted in new contexts of language learning, development of literacy and socialization for youths who have immigrated to the United States. (nd, p.25) Immigrant students and their experience with the American educational system are stated to have "been defined within the national imagination" in which public institutions such as schools "serve as major instruments for assimilating new immigrants into the social and moral fabric of society." (Lam, nd, p.25)

Schools perceive that immigrant students due to the cultural and linguistic practices are in possessing of a "problem to be solved or a deficit to be remediated through accelerated English language instruction accompanied by a perennial suspicion toward bilingual education." (Lam, nd, p.3) However, the idea of assimilation "does not automatically translate into the pursuit of the American dream…" (Lam, nd, p.3) Lam states that "inclusionary/assimilationist and exclusionary/segregationist forms of educational policies and practices have been used to incorporate new immigrants into the social and economic structure of the American society." (nd, p.3)

Language and literacy education is reported by Lam to have been utilized to bring immigrant students into the "moral and symbolic universe of the national through teaching a monolingual standard of English at the expense of other languages or dialects, which are by and large viewed as a hindrance or deterrence to the acquisition of standard English if placed within the public domain of schooling." (nd, p.4) The fear of non-American language and culture is that which expresses the reason that immigrants students are "disproportionately sent into remedial, vocational, and special education classes. Immigrants make a gradually move from identifying with their own linguistic, cultural and national origins into an identification with specific races and ethnicities in the United States." (Lam, nd. p.4) According to Lam "Technology has served to assist immigrants students with assimilation through enabling them to remain friends closely in contact with those in their home country as well as enabling them to remain in contact with family and what is really happening." (nd, p.4) According to Lam, assimilation has been replaced by transculturalization or a "…socialization to multiple modes of belonging and participation across national boundaries." (nd, p.4) Lam states "A growing body of research on technologically-mediated literacy has shown how young people's computer-mediated activities involve the use of multiple representational resources; Language, Literacy and the Immigrant formation of identities and sociocultural communities across virtual and material spaces; polyfocal orientation to time and space; and learning in socially situated communities of practice that are sometimes transnational in scope." (nd, p.6)

Also importantly stated by Lam is the following: "Effective citizenship and productive work now require that we interact effectively using multiple languages, multiple Englishes, and communication patterns that more frequently cross cultural, community, and national boundaries. For literacy pedagogy to work productively with multiplicity and difference, there needs to be a re-direction or expansion of pedagogical focus from a heavy emphasis on the teaching of the standard version of the national language in the form of print literacy to the growing importance of cultivating the skills and orientation necessary for understanding and engaging with linguistic and cultural diversity in multiple representational media." (nd, p.7)

The work of Castel, et al. (2011) reports that the ability of the person to conduct selective encoding of information that is important is a primary required skill in moving about effectively in one's environment across all life stages. It is noted that Castel (2008) holds that selective attending to "important information and then later recalling this high-value information can be conceptualized as strategic control of attention and memory." (p.1553 ) Castel et al. states that the study reported was for the purpose of making a determination "whether memory capacity (defined here as the amount of information that can be remembered -- a form of memory quantity) is enhanced from childhood to younger adulthood, with declines occurring after middle age." (2011, p.1553)

Findings reported by Castel et al. (2011) state that the results indicate that "…overall memory capacity and the ability to selectively encode high-value items are empirically distinct, and appear to follow different developmental trajectories." (p.1555) Reported as well is that all age groups participating in the study adapted to becoming "more selective with task experience" which indicates that the task instructions were understood by each group and that each group "implemented some degree of value-directed remembering. In addition, all groups were able to maximize their score with successive study test cycles, and this may be due to the use of feedback and monitoring performance." (Castel, et al., 2011, p.1560) Findings of the study have important implications in regards to cognitive control, frontal lobe development, and models of memory theories in that "(Castel et al., 2011, p.1560)