Welcome to the SSHD Forum

What happens on this space?

Anyone can view the contents of this forum, however; by joining SSHD you can edit and participate in the on-going creation of this discussion.  As a part of the SSHD membership you will be given a password to log in and engage in the discussions on this site.

The aim of this forum is to provide an outlet for ideas, resources, and discussions for moving developmental science forward.  The content is only limited by your creativity. 

Just to get things started here are a few starters:

A Decade of Developmental Sciences:  Where have we come and where are we going?

At the last Biennial conference at Penn State I was discussing ideas about this forum with Glenn Elder and he proposed a marvelous idea.  It has been 8 years since the publication of Developmental Science and the Holistic Approach by Lars Bergman, Robert Cairns, Lars-Goran Nilsson, and Lars Nystedt.  Bob Cairns contributed a chapter to that volumn in which he outlined Three Audacious Implications for Developmental Science:

Implication 1:  The scope of developmental science: 

The scope of interdisciplinary collaboration inherent in developmental science has been (and still is to some degree) daunting.  Have we as developmental scientists created an intellectual framework which is not just interdisciplinary, but rather transcendent and resulting in a new meta-discipline?  If so, how do we train future developmental scientists?  Are we blurring or rearranging the divisional lines of the academy?

Implication 2:  Methods and models:  

Speaking from my own personal perspective - I came to the point where I were the statisticians hat much of the time because traditional statistical methods and research designs have such a poor fit with developmental theory.  Taking the postulates of developmental science seriously continues to be a considerable driving force behind some revolutionary methods in data analysis.  

Implication 3:  Early experience, novelty and change:

Developmental science has brought to the foreground discussions of the nature of change, canalization, and plasticity across the lifespan.  These are old questions to be sure, but with new empirical data and new  methodological approaches is there new life to be breathed into these concepts. 

Future Discussion / Resource Threads

Tools for longitudinal data analysis and dynamic systems modeling

Developmental Science in the Public Arena

 Create your own educational wiki!Support CommunityPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS