HuBe1

Human development

  • def: through behavior, thought, emotion, and personality across the lifes, seeks to understand the changes and remain same in different individuals age.

  • normal and abnormal/deviant human development refects complexity and uniqueness of individual experiences in development.

  • Life-Span Perspective: A view of human development that takes into account all life phases, not limited to childhood or adulthood.

  • Multidisciplinary approach incorporating : Biology, Genetics, Chemistry, Medicine, Psychology, Sociology, Demography, Ethnography, Economics, Anthropology.

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Key Issues in Human Development

1. Nature-Nurture issues

  • Nature: inborn propensities and bias, biological influences.

  • Nurture: learning through environmental experiences, internal models of experience

  • Genetic influences and environmental influences determine the type of person that you become

2. Continuity-Discontinuity issues

  • Continuity: Quantitative changes

  • Discontinuity: Qualitative changes / stage

  • a particular developmental phenomenon follows smooth progression through life span / a series of abrupt shifts

3. Universal vs Context-Specific issues

  • Development follows just one path or multiple.

    • Normative age-graded Changes: unversal age norms and social clocks.

    • Normative history-graded Changes: generational effects, group changes

    • Non-normative Changes: Unique, unshared change, individual different

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Forces (Causes) & Stages of Development

Key Forces Affecting Development

  1. Biological Forces: Genetics and health-related factors.

  2. Psychological Forces: Internal, perceptions, emotions, cognition, personality

  3. Sociocultural Forces: Interpersonal, societal, cultural, ethnic

  4. Life-Cycle Forces: differences of people experiencing same event at different age

  • all 4 forces view for development in biopsychosocial framework

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Relevance to Social Work/Services

P1: Knowledge

  • Understanding the importance of biopsychosocial forces in development processes and assessment of human behaviour.

  • Observation of interactions among biological, psychological, and social systems.

    e.g. 1. relationship between social and environmental development

    2. these systems impact behaviour and well-being

    3. ways of promoting or deterring individual in attainment or maintenance of

    resources for optimal health and well-being through social system

P2: Values

  • Respect and Appreciate the differences in value, beliefs, customs, behaviours and social systems among diverse populations

  • Enhance awareness: personal values and ethics impact process of social work assessment and intervention

P3: Skill

  • accurate assessments of the cases at hand

    → based on understanding of all forces and

    their interactions that influence human development at different stages of life

→ e.g. understand normal/abnormal in humandevelopment

affect considering when intervention is necessary or not

  • effective interventions to individuals, groups, families, social systems, communities