Meaning of development
Development is the pattern of progressive, orderly and predictable change that begins at conception and continues throughout life. It includes gains and losses.
- Growth: increase in size of the body or its parts (height, weight). It is quantitative.
- Maturation: changes that follow an inborn biological timetable (sitting, walking, puberty).
- Learning / experience: changes that come from practice and the environment.
Development includes all three. It is continuous and each stage builds on the previous one.
Life-span perspective on development
- Lifelong: no age holds all the answers; development continues from conception to old age.
- Multidimensional: biological, cognitive and socio-emotional parts.
- Multidirectional: some abilities rise while others fall (vocabulary grows while reaction speed slows in old age).
- Plastic: capacity to change; skills can improve with training even late in life.
- Historical conditions matter: a child growing up during a war or a pandemic develops differently.
- Multidisciplinary: studied by psychology, sociology, biology, medicine and more.
- Contextual: people respond to and act on their settings.
Three processes
Biological (body, brain, hormones), cognitive (thinking, language, intelligence) and socio-emotional (emotions, personality, relationships) are interwoven.
Factors influencing development
- Heredity: genes from parents. The genotype is the genetic material; the phenotype is how the person actually turns out (observable traits), which depends on genes plus environment.
- Environment: nutrition, health care, family love, schooling, poverty, culture.
- Maturation: the body's own timetable.
- Interaction: genes set a range; environment decides where in that range the person ends up. People also choose environments that fit their genes (a musical child seeks music).
Contexts of development
Bronfenbrenner's ecological model places the child in nested systems:
- Microsystem: immediate settings — family, school, friends, neighbourhood.
- Mesosystem: links between microsystems (parent-teacher meetings).
- Exosystem: settings the child is not in but which affect her (a parent's workplace, local health services).
- Macrosystem: culture, values, laws, economy.
- Chronosystem: events and changes over time (divorce, moving, a new sibling).
Durganand Sinha's ecological view of the Indian child: an inner (upper) layer of home, school and peer group, set inside an outer layer of the wider community, caste, economic conditions and culture. The layers interact and change over time.
Try it
Draw your own circles: write 3 things in your microsystem, 1 link (mesosystem), 1 exosystem setting and 1 macrosystem value. Then play with the sliders in the 3D free-play step.
Key formulas and definitions
- Development = growth + maturation + learning (lifelong)
- Life-span view: lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, historical, multidisciplinary, contextual
- Phenotype = genotype × environment
- Bronfenbrenner: micro → meso → exo → macro → chrono
Worked examples
1. Classify: (a) a baby starts walking at about 12 months, (b) a boy grows 8 cm in a year, (c) a girl learns to ride a bicycle.
(a) Maturation (biological timetable), (b) growth (increase in size), (c) learning from practice.
2. A grandmother learns to use a smartphone at 70. Which feature of the life-span view is shown?
Plasticity: the capacity to change and learn at any age (also lifelong development).
3. Place in Bronfenbrenner's model: (a) school, (b) parent's office overtime, (c) cultural value of respecting elders, (d) parents talking to the class teacher.
(a) Microsystem, (b) exosystem, (c) macrosystem, (d) mesosystem.
4. Identical twins raised in very different homes show different IQ scores. What does this show?
Same genotype, different phenotype: environment changes how the genetic potential is expressed.
Common mistakes
- Using growth and development as the same word. Growth is only size; development is wider.
- Thinking development stops at adulthood. The life-span view says it is lifelong.
- Arguing "heredity OR environment". Both always interact.
- Putting a parent's workplace in the microsystem. The child is not there, so it is the exosystem.