Developmental Systems Meets Developmental Science By Jennifer Brown Urban, Ph.D.

At its core, developmental science aims to explore bi-directional relationships, interactions across contexts, and change over time. Despite major statistical and methodological advances, the field is in need of new methodological tools that integrate existing and new research, at different levels of analysis, account for bi-directional feedback processes and address the complexity inherent in change that occurs throughout the lifespan. Systems science methodologies (including system dynamics, agent based modeling, network analysis, etc.) are well suited to such endeavors, but have yet to be harnessed to their full potential by developmental scientists.

The notion of a systems approach to development is far from novel as is evidenced by theoretical work in areas such as bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), developmental contextualism (Lerner, 2002), dynamic systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1998), and holistic person-context interaction theory (Magnusson, 1995). Both systems methodologies and developmental systems theories draw from a common literature in fields such as physics and engineering¹. While developmental science has adopted the concepts proposed by systems science, the full range of methods has not yet been adequately explored.

The application of systems science methods to developmental science questions holds tremendous promise. Systems science approaches integrate multiple levels of analysis – from cells to behavior to society – to understand the ways in which individual, contextual, and organizational factors interact over time. One of the primary advantages of utilizing systems science methods as a complementary method is that nonlinear relationships, the unintended effects of intervening in the system, and time-delayed effects are often missed with traditional reductionist approaches, whereas systems methods excel at detecting these. Because of its unique ability to consider simultaneously both the whole system and its individual parts, the application of systems science methodologies in developmental science shows promise for unlocking the secrets of complex, multidimensional issues and for transforming this knowledge into effective interventions that can fundamentally change developmental outcomes.

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lerner, R. M. (2002). Concepts and theories of human development (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Magnusson, D. (1995). Individual development: A holistic, integrated model. In P. Moen, G.H. Elder, & K. Luscher (Eds.). Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the ecology of human development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Thelen, E. & Smith, L.B. (1998). Dynamic systems theories. In R.M. Lerner (Ed.). Theoretical models of human development. Volume 1 of Handbook of Child Psychology (5th ed.) Editors-in-Chief: W. Damon & R.M. Lerner. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

1 Examples include works by Fritjof Capra (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra), Ludwig von Bertalanffy (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Bertalanffy), and Humberto Maturana (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana).

Remembering Gwen Sorell

Gwen Sorell, a member of the SSHD Steering Committee, passed on March 23, 2009 after a brave struggle with cancer.

Gwen was a human development scholar. Her area of specialization, reflected in her research and teaching, was development during adulthood. During her career, she taught undergraduate courses in early and middle age adult development, and a yearly graduate seminar in adulthood that was highly valued by graduate students. Her ongoing research, the Women's Identity Project, involved many students over the years, and filled a gap in the adult development literature in that much of the previous research on adult development had been limited to men. Underlying this work was her commitment to the importance of developmental theory, the philosophical bases of theory, and the implications of philosophy/theory for science and for social action. She often said that what she most enjoyed was discussing and debating theory--in her graduate human development theories course, in her mentoring of graduate students, and with colleagues. Her expertise in and her passion for the study of human development enriched the lives and careers of many students, and of her professional colleagues.