Poster #42 - Integration of Sociocultural and Relational Developmental Science Perspectives in Analysis of Developmental Transitions

• In Event: Poster Session 19

Abstract

The overarching purpose of the study reported in the proposed presentation is to operationalize the developmental process as articulated by a theoretical integration of relational developmental science perspectives (Brandtstädter, 1998; Overton, 2006) and sociocultural perspectives (Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978). Action and activity are conceptualized as the locus of developmental change in both perspectives, with culture as the interpretive and meaning-making processes that individuals utilize in the process of acting in, with, and on their environments (Mistry & Dutta, 2015). Thus, in both cultural and developmental science perspectives, culturally constructed or derived meanings are considered constitutive features of action, and thereby integral in the developmental process itself. In fact, the process of epigenesis whereby individual action is constructed, interpreted, and adjusted in a dynamic co-constructive and relational to-and-fro system between the person and interpreted context, is the microscopic mechanism of development (Brandtstädter, 2006; Cole, 2006; Rogoff, 2003; Overton, 2006).

The study was designed to elicit narrative accounts of salient developmental transitions from college-aged participants to enable analysis of the developmental process as described by participants in their stories. The data consists of 177 narrative accounts of salient developmental transitions elicited from a sample of 69 undergraduate students. Participants enrolled in a course on human development were asked to recall two to four experiences they considered most salient in their own developmental history. Since the underlying theoretical assumption is that the individual process of acting in, with, and on the environment through culturally interpreted meanings itself represents the developmental process, our analysis is guided by strategies of narrative analysis, as well as the narrative identity approach (McLean & Syed, 2015) emphasizing that narrated interpretations of personal experiences reveal how individuals make meaning of their experiences in culturally interpreted worlds and integrate experienced events into their life story (McAdams, 2013).

In a two-step mixed methods analysis, we first examined the types of events and the socialization domains (Grusec & Davidov, 2010) that participants identified in their narrative accounts of salient developmental transitions and explored variations by participant demographic characteristics (e.g., race-ethnicity and college year). Family-Related Transitions and Being Constructed as Other were the most common types of developmental events that appeared in the participants’ narratives. Interestingly, among both participants of European Heritage, as well as among participants of Minoritized Heritage, over 40% of the narratives were accounts of Being Constructed as Other.

In the second step, interpretive narrative analysis of the most common accounts of developmental transitions illustrated how narrators position themselves as contextualized within their specific environmental contexts, interweave personal and societal metanarratives to reveal the meaning-making frames that are salient to them in interpreting, responding to, and acting on their contexts, and reflect on how the consequences of salient developmental transitions have been incorporated into their understanding of their own developmental histories. Illustrative examples are used to highlight the process of epigenesis whereby individual action is constructed, interpreted, and adjusted in a dynamic co-constructive and relational to-and-fro system between the person and interpreted context.

Authors

• Jayanthi Mistry, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Yifan Zuo, None

• Claudia Lilly Hyman, Tufts University