Читать книгу Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence - Laura E. Levine - Страница 94

 2.1 What do child development theories tell us?

 2.2 What are the hypotheses and modern applications of the major child development theories?

 2.3 What role do neuropsychology, genetics, and culture play in the study of child development?

 2.4 How is research on child development conducted?

 2.5 What are ethical considerations in research with children and adolescents?

When we observe and work with children and adolescents, we want to make sense out of what we see. The explanations we develop about why children behave in certain ways can become theories. In this chapter, we describe some of the major theories that have influenced how we understand child development today. All theories must be testable, so in the second half of the chapter we describe a variety of methods used to test these theories and to build our knowledge base. We begin with a discussion of why theories are an important basis for our understanding of development.