Abstract
Developmental Psychology is the science of human growth and development across the life span. Drawing from its parent discipline, Psychology’s developmental subdiscipline has continued with a focus on Western, industrialized, and educated populations while describing behavior. By eliminating cultural contexts from its discourse, the discipline of Psychology has largely ignored the majority world in constructing the notion of childhood and later development. Standards and norms are mostly based on these assumptions. This chapter outlines some shortcomings of mainstream Psychology and the impact this has had in creating a unidimensional, narrow, and skewed understanding of human development and behavior. These criticisms are not new. Yet the refusal to recognize the obvious continues to plague the discipline. By choosing to align with the “scientific” methods of experimentation and lab-based study developed by the physical sciences, by emphasizing standards and norms of human behavior, by insisting on Western/European/American interpretations of behavior, Psychology has created a hegemonic discipline that still continues to use the “one (costly) glove fits all” premise. Using research examples from Asia (specifically India) and Africa, the chapter systematically demonstrates how well-established tools, techniques, systems, and theoretical binaries are inadequate to explain the diversity of human existence. Some instances of traditional, context-specific ideas and wisdom have been shared to emphasize the need to recognize and hear multiple voices. Using the cultural understanding of childhood as the focus, the association between science and culture has also been examined. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the student of Psychology to the idea of globally valid and sustainable ideas to respond to the changing needs and situation of a new world order.
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Chaudhary, N., Tuli, M., Raees, A. (2023). Developmental Psychology: Moving Beyond the East–West Divide. In: Zumbach, J., Bernstein, D.A., Narciss, S., Marsico, G. (eds) International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28745-0_14
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