TO WHAT EXTENT DO THE GRAND THEORIES TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT?

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TO WHAT EXTENT DO THE 'GRAND THEORIES' TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT?

Nowadays it is widely accepted that social context greatly influences a person's development in many aspects and throughout their lives. Developmental psychology aims to describe how children develop and its grand theories emerged to "offer general explanations of child development as a whole, rather than just certain areas" (Oates et al., 2005, p. 49). In this essay, the main elements of the four 'grand theories' of child development are discussed, exploring in more detail which aspects within the social experiences are explored by each grand theory.

For the purpose of this essay, when discussing social experiences we will refer to any social aspect of human experience, including socio-cultural contexts and social relations and their products. Some of these experiences have been taken into account by the field of developmental psychology in order to study and investigate how children's minds and behaviour change throughout their lifespan.

This field of study has produced many theories that propose hypothesis to explain different aspects of child development. Among these, four theories stand out and are sometimes referred to as 'grand theories':