Lifespan Development. Tara L. Kuther

in a way that is comprehensive yet concise.

      Lifespan Development: Lives in Context focuses on two key themes that promote understanding of how humans develop through the lifespan: the centrality of context and the applied value of developmental science. These two themes are highlighted throughout the text as well as in boxed features. This text also emphasizes cutting-edge research and a student-friendly writing style.

      Contextual Perspective

      Development does not occur in a vacuum but is a function of dynamic transactions among individuals, their biological makeup, and myriad contextual influences. We are all embedded in multiple interacting layers of context, including tangible and intangible circumstances that influence and are influenced by our development, such as family, ethnicity, culture, neighborhood, community, norms, values, and historical events. The contextual approach of Lifespan Development: Lives in Context emphasizes the intersection of context and diversity and the many forms that diversity takes (gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.).

      Lifespan Development: Lives in Context emphasizes how individual factors, combined with the places, sociocultural environments, and ways in which we are raised, influence who we become and how we grow and change throughout the lifespan. This theme is infused throughout the text and highlighted specifically in two types of boxed features that appear in each chapter: Lives in Context and Cultural Influences on Development. Examples of Lives in Context features include the effects of maternal depression on emotional development in infancy and toddlerhood, transgender children, and the effects of exposure to war and terrorism in childhood. The Cultural Influences on Development feature examines cultural perspectives on biological changes such as birth, menarche, menopause, and death. This feature also examines cultural influences on individuals’ development and how they understand their world, such as language development, theory of mind, views of aging, and susceptibility to dementia.

      Emphasis on Application

      The field of lifespan developmental science is unique because so much of its content has immediate relevance to our daily lives. Students may wonder this: Do the first 3 years shape the brain for a lifetime of experiences? Is learning more than one language beneficial to children? Do people’s personalities change over their lifetimes? Do adults go through a midlife crisis? How common is dementia in older adulthood? Moreover, findings from lifespan developmental science have been applied to inform social policies that affect us all. Lifespan Development: Lives in Context engages students by exploring these and many more real-world questions. The emphasis on application is highlighted specifically in the Applying Developmental Science boxed feature, which examines applied and social policy topics such as the implications of the opioid crisis, whether video games cause aggression, antibullying legislation, age discrimination, and the issue of disclosing dementia diagnoses to patients.

      Current Research

      The lifespan course comes with the challenge of covering the growing mass of research findings within the confines of a single semester. Lifespan Development: Lives in Context integrates carefully selected current research findings with the classic theory and research that remains an important foundation for today’s most exciting scholarly work. I integrate cutting-edge and classic research to present a unified story of what is currently known in developmental science. For example, neuroscience and epigenetics are some of the most rapidly growing areas of developmental science research. These topics are reflected throughout the text and especially in the Brain and Biological Influences on Development feature, which examines topics such as pregnancy and the maternal brain, poverty and brain development, the effects of sleep on emotional regulation in young children and neurological functioning in adults, chronic traumatic encephalopathy in athletes, and whether age-related neurological changes increase older adults’ risk for maltreatment.

      Accessible Writing Style

      Having taught at a regional public university for over 20 years, I write in a style intended to engage undergraduate readers like my own students. This text is intended to help them understand challenging concepts in language that will not overwhelm: I have avoided jargon but maintained the use of professional and research terms that students need to know in order to digest classic and current literature in the lifespan development field. I regularly use my own text in class, and my students’ responses and learning guide my writing.

      Organization

      Lifespan Development: Lives in Context is organized into 19 chronological chapters that depict the natural unfolding of development over the lifespan from genetic foundations, conception, and birth to older adulthood and the end of life. Chapters are grouped into nine thematic units that represent the major periods in the lifespan.

      Part I, Foundations of Lifespan Human Development, includes Chapters 1, 2, and 3. Chapter 1 combines lifespan theory and research design within a single chapter. I chose this streamlined approach because, given limited class time, many instructors (including myself) do not cover stand-alone research chapters. The streamlined approach combines comprehensive coverage of methods of data collection, research design, developmental designs (such as sequential designs), and ethical issues in research with full coverage of the major theories in developmental psychology. Chapter 2 presents the biological foundations of development, including patterns of genetic inheritance, gene–environment interactions, and epigenetics. Chapter 3 describes prenatal development and birth.

      Part II, Infancy and Toddlerhood, comprises three chapters because the rapid and dramatic transformations over the first years of life merit comprehensive discussion of the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional changes in stand-alone chapters (Chapters 4, 5, and 6).

      Parts III through VIII contain two chapters each: physical and cognitive development as well as socioemotional development. Part III covers early childhood; Part IV, middle childhood; Part V, adolescence; Part VI, early adulthood; Part VII, middle adulthood; and Part VIII, late adulthood. Finally, Part IX (Chapter 19) presents death and dying, including the processes of death, how children and adults understand death, and coping with bereavement.

      Pedagogy

      My day-to-day experiences in the classroom have helped me to keep college students’ interests and abilities at the forefront. Unlike many textbook authors, I teach four classes each semester at a comprehensive regional public university (and have done so since 1996). I taught my first online course in 2002. My daily exposure to multiple classes and many students helps keep me grounded in the ever-changing concerns and interests of college students. I teach a diverse group of students. Some live on campus, but most commute. Most of my students are ages 18 to 24, but my classes also include many so-called adult learners over the age of 24. Many are veterans, a rapidly increasing population at my institution. I have many opportunities to try new examples and activities. I believe that what works in my classroom will be helpful to readers and instructors. I use the pedagogical elements of Lifespan Development: Lives in Context in my own classes and modify them based on my experiences.

      Learning Objectives and Summaries

      Core learning objectives are listed at the beginning of each chapter. The end-of-chapter summary returns to each learning objective, recapping the key concepts presented in the chapter related to