Basic Issues

In our first lesson, we started talking about some basic issues about child development. Later, we went on with some theories. So we started with these four issues:
1. Nature vs. Nurture:
This is about how heredity and environment interacts. For example we said that height can be affected by both nature and nurture.
2. Continuous vs. Discontinuous:
This issue is about how development proceeds. We talked about 2 types of development; quantitative and qualitative. When we say quantitative, we mean a continuous process where you add up information as you grow, whereas in qualitative, the stages are not related to each other.
3. Universal vs. Context-Specific:
While discussing this issue, we gave the example of eating. Eating is a universal progression where people all around the world start with nursing when they are babies and then pass on to solid food. However we also said that expectations of eating might be context-specific as it may differ from culture to culture. In some places such as Turkey, children are forced to eat mostly by older family members. Another example for context-specific would be display rules. How people react to the way we express our emotions are not the same everywhere. In many cultures it is okay for a woman to cry but a shame to for a man to cry. If we'd think of our country, we don’t see men crying in public but it is likely to see a women crying in public.
4. Active vs. Passive:
We can understand this issue by looking at the relationship between a child and the environment. When a child is playing with the environment, we can say that this is active but the child and his development is also influenced by the environment and this is passive.

Although I thought that I’ve really understood these issues, I had a bit of a hard time when it came to finding them in the theories. In many of these theories that we have discussed, I couldn’t decide if one was continuous or discontinuous, active or passive, etc. Anyway I’ll work on them a bit more and write about them next time.