Deconstructing Developmental Psychology

Feminist, Intersectional, Decolonial Interventions
4 ed
ISBN: 978-1-032-70231-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 548 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm

This thoroughly updated fourth edition of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology interrogates the assumptions and practices surrounding the psychology of child development. It provides a critical evaluation of the role and contribution of developmental psychology within social practice.

Re-evaluating core topics and debates in developmental psychology, this new edition interrogates current debates and social movements around neurodiversity, disability studies via feminist and postcolonial analyses. It includes two brand new chapters on protecting children that critically evaluates debates about child protection and harms to children, and what happens when attachment is lost. The book offers key tools for understanding current social policy and media concerns on local and global levels, discussing issues such as the impacts of social media on children; autism; Adverse Child Experiences; and age assessment of child asylum seekers. Each chapter includes suggested activities and further reading, making it easier to apply theory to practice.

Offering critical insights into politics and procedures that have shaped developmental psychological knowledge, this engaging and accessible text is essential reading for students of psychology, social work, health care, education and childhood studies. It will also be of interest to professional and practitioner groups working with children or child policy.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Professional Practice & Development, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burman, Erica

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Entwicklungspsychologie Kinder- und Jugendpsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface to the 4th edition. Introduction: Commitments, Resources and Methodological Frameworks. PART I: Constructing the (developing) subject. Origin stories: How animals, humans, colonial and sex/gender dynamics structure the study of childhood. Researching Infancy: The conflation of the technical with the conceptual, and an ethical interruption. Attributing sociality: From smiling and jiggling to mentalisation, the problem of mirror perspectives, autism and the 'double empathy problem', ethical-political questions of culture, gender and (reproductive) technologies. Discoursing 'child': Psychology textbooks, 'children's 'needs', childcare advice and intensive mothering, the schooled child (and its relations with – the gendering of - ADHD), why (not to) breastfeed, the child subject of humanitarian aid - and its others. (Gendered) models of childhood (and parents): 'inner child', endangered (groomed?), bullied and dangerous children, working children, early intervention shrinking the social and how resilient babies' brains make national wealth. PART II: Social development and the structuring of care. Protecting children? Reporting, supporting and removing children, gendered, classed, colonial and racialised intersections, listening to children and a historical detour generates new perspectives on ACEs; climate anxiety and the 'child mental health crisis'. Familiar assumptions: de-naturalising the child-family-state (and stateless) nexus; and how 'age assessment' repeats the problems of cross-cultural psychology; key topics for researching children and families. Bonds of love and the making of attachment: mothers, nannies, and the global care chain; racialised, colonial and class overdeterminations and double standards, and legacies from Bowlby and Freud. Losing, saving or extending attachment: Retelling the origins of 'maternal deprivation' as empirical and ethical overreach, current cautionary reformulations and the importance of groups. Involving fathers: shifting masculinities, gendered tensions, and how these subvert or, alternatively, maintain developmental imperatives. PART III: Developing communication. Language talk: From labels to actions, routines and chunks; inner speech vs egocentrism, emotions in and through language, from monolingualism to multilingual, translanguaging and raciolinguistic perspectives. Discourses of caregiving talk: from adult adaptations and models to inter-generational, cultural and embodied perspectives. Language and power in developmental research: Seven examples of how power relations constitute and constrain speaking positions for children. PART IV: Cognitive development: the making of rationality and its others. The disciplining of Piaget and Vygotsky in the construction of developmental psychology: missing links, recent re-evaluations and what these indicate about how geopolitics structures psychological discourse. Child-centred education and beyond: from whole children to the regulation of families, home-schooling, what's wrong with 'play', 'schoolification', 'emotional intelligence' and the 'growth mindset', to re-interpreting the 'attainment gap' as racial capitalist governmentality. Morality and the goals of development: From children's games to ethical-political dilemmas of developmentalism, critical resources, and some proposals.

Über Autor(innen)

Erica Burman currently works as Professor of Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. Developmental psychologist and group analyst by training, her research interrogates connections between childhood, development and geopolitical relations, and how these link emotions and both personal and societal change. She is the author of several books, including Child as Method: Othering, Interiority and Materialism (2024).