Child and adolescent development

For school psychologists, understanding how children and adolescents develop and learn forms a backdrop to their everyday work, but the many new ‘facts’ shown by empirical studies can be difficult to absorb; nor do they make sense unless brought together within theoretical frameworks that help to guide practice. In this chapter, we explore the idea that child and adolescent development is a moveable feast, across both time and place. This is aimed at providing a helpful perspective for considering the many texts and papers that do focus on ‘facts’. We outline how our understanding of children’s development has evolved as various schools of thought have emerged. While many of the traditional theories continue to provide useful educational, remedial and therapeutic frameworks, there is also a need to take a more critical approach that supports multiple interpretations of human activity and development. With this in mind, we re-visit the idea of norms and milestones, consider the importance of context, reflect on some implications of psychology’s current biological zeitgeist and note a growing movement promoting the idea that we should be listening more seriously to children’s own voices.