EDUC10: Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles

Module 3
ISSUES ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Introduction
Each of us has his/her own informal way of looking at our own and other people's
development. These paradigms of human development while obviously lacking in scholastic
vigor, provide us with a conceptual framework for understanding ourselves and others.
Scholars have come up with their own models of human development. Back up by solid
research, they take stand on issues on human development.
COURSE MODULE

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Take a researched-based position on the three (3) issues on development.

The Issues
1. Nature versus Nurture
Which has a more significant influence on human development? Nature or nurture?
Nature refers to an individual's biological inheritance. Nurture refers to environmental
experiences.

2. Continuity versus Discontinuity

Does development involve gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct
changes (discontinuity). To make it more concrete, here is a question: Is our
development like that of a seedling gradually growing into an acacia tree? Or is it
more like that of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly?

3. Stability vs. Change

Is development best described as involving stability or as involving change? Are we
what our first experiences have made of us or do we develop into someone different
from who we were at an earlier point in development?

The issues presented can be translated into questions that have sparked animated
debate among developmentalists. Are girls less likely to do well in math because of their
'feminine nature or because of society's 'masculine' bias? How extensively can the elderly be
trained to reason more effectively? How much, if at all, does our memory decline in old
age? Can techniques be used to prevent or reduce the decline? For children who
experienced a world of poverty, neglect by parents, and poor schooling in childhood, can
enriched experiences in adolescence remove the deficits' that they encountered earlier in
their development (Santrock, 2002)?

Based on the presentations, each one has his/her own explanations for his/her stand
on the developmental issues. What is the right answer? Up to this time, the debate continues.
Researches are on-going. But let me tell you that most life-span developmentalists recognize
that extreme positions on these issues are unwise. Development is not all nature or all nurture,
not all continuity or discontinuity and not all stability or all change ( Lerner 1998 as quoted by
Santrock, 2002). Both nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity, stability and change
characterize life-span development. The key to development is the interaction of nature and
nurture rather than either factor alone (Rutter, 2001 quoted by Santrock, 2002). In other
words, it is a matter of "both and not either-or.” Just go back to the quote beneath the title
this lesson and the message gets crystal clear.

To summarize, both genes and environment are necessary for a person even to exist.
Without genes, there is no person; without environment, there is no person (Scarr and
Weinberg, 1980, quoted by Santrock, 2002). Heredity and environment operate together or
cooperate and interact - to produce a person's intelligence, temperament, height, weight...
 ability to read and so on.

If heredity and environment interact, which one has a greater influence or

contribution, heredity or environment? The relative contributions of heredity and
environment are not additive. So we can't say 50% is a contribution of heredity and 50% of
environment Neither is it correct to say that full genetic expression happens once, around
conception or birth, after which we take our genetic legacy into the world to see how far it
gets us. Genes produce proteins throughout the life span, in many different environments. Or
they don't produce these proteins, depending on how harsh or nourishing those
environments are. (Santrock, 2002).
A Sample Article
COURSE MODULE

How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life

What makes us the way we are? Why are some people predisposed to be anxious,
overweight or asthmatic? How is it that some of us are prone to heart attacks, diabetes or
high blood pressure?

There's a list of conventional answers to these questions. We are the way we are
because it's in our genes. We turn out the way we do because of our childhood
experiences. Or our health and well-being stem from the lifestyle choices we make as adults.

But there's another powerful source of influence you may not have considered: your
life as a fetus. The nutrition you received in the womb, the pollutants, drugs and infections
you were exposed to during gestation, your mother's health and state of mind while she was
pregnant with you - all these factors shaped you as a baby and continue to affect you to
this day.

This is the provocative contention of a field known as fetal origins, whose pioneers
assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives,
PERMANENTLY (Underscoring, mine) influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of
organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas. In the literature on the subject, which has
exploded over the past 10 years, you can find references to the fetal origins of cancer,
cardiovascular disease, allergies, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness. At
the farthest edge of fetal origins research, scientists are exploring the possibility that
intrauterine conditions influence not only our physical health but also our intelligence,
temperament, even our sanity.

As a journalist who covers science, I was intrigued when I first heard about fetal origins.
But two years ago, when I began to delve more deeply into the field, I had a more personal
motivation: I was, newly pregnant. If it was true that my actions over the next nine months
would affect my offspring for the rest of his life, I needed to know more.

Of course, no woman who is pregnant today can escape hearing the message that
what she does affects her fetus. She hears it at doctor's appointments, sees it in the
pregnancy guidebooks: Do eat this, don't drink that, be vigilant but never stressed.
Expectant mothers could be forgiven for feeling that pregnancy is just a nine-month slog, full
of guilt and devoid of pleasure, and this research threatened to add to the burden.

But the scientists I met weren't full of dire warnings but of the excitement of discovery -
and the hope that their discoveries would make a positive difference. Research on fetal
origins is prompting a revolutionary shift in thinking about where human qualities come from
and when they begin to develop. It's turning pregnancy into a scientific frontier: National
Institutes of Health embarked last year on a multidecade study that will examine its subjects
before they're born. And it makes the won a promising target for prevention, raising hopes of
conquering public-health scourges like obesity and heart disease through interventions
before birth.
-Time Magazine, October 4, 2010
 TEXTBOOK
• Corpuz, Brenda B., et al…(2018). The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning
Principles. Lorimar Publishing Inc., Cubao, Quezon City.
COURSE MODULE