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Lifespan Development is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license, which means that you can distribute, remix, and build upon the content, as long as you provide attribution to OpenStax and its content contributors.
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Art attribution
In Lifespan Development, art contains attribution to its title, creator or rights holder, host platform, and license within the caption. Because the art is openly licensed, anyone may reuse the art as long as they provide the same attribution to its original source.
Errata
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Format
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About Lifespan Development
Lifespan Development aligns to the topics and objectives of most introductory developmental psychology and human development courses taught across departments. Grounded in foundational theories and scientific research, the text teaches students about core aspects of human development—physical, cognitive, social, emotional—across the lifespan. A primary goal of the book is to incorporate content, scholarship, and activities that explore a variety of perspectives that encourage all students to feel seen and included.
Most importantly, the text is grounded in sound, current scholarship. Both researchers and practitioners in the discipline sometimes have complicated and disparate views on issues that are simply part of understanding the lifespan and supporting people through its phases. Lifespan Development strives to openly address complex topics with scholarly responsibility and an effort to increase equity and inclusion in the research presented, as well as to foster student engagement in the classroom through relevant examples and applications. Focused on driving meaningful and memorable learning experiences, the narrative places concepts in contexts that give students the means to understand human development and how that knowledge can be applied to and improve their own lives and the lives of others.
Pedagogical Foundation
Learning Objectives
Every module begins with a set of clear and concise learning objectives designed to help the instructor decide what content to include or assign, and to guide student expectations of learning. After completing the end-of-module exercises, students should be able to demonstrate mastery of the learning objectives.
Key Features
- It Depends: Weaves scientific inquiry by presenting emerging research on topics that are complex, nuanced, and on which the scientific community may not have consensus.
- Intersections and Contexts: Highlights the interconnectedness of contexts, developmental systems, and the individual. It encompasses contexts such as culture, race, class, gender, and typical vs. atypical development.
- Life Hacks: Provide specific guidance on how students can apply the material in the chapter to improve their own lives and the lives of others.
Section Summaries
Section summaries distill the information in each section for both students and instructors down to key, concise points addressed in the section.
Key Terms
Key terms are bold and are followed by a definition in context. Definitions of key terms are also listed in the Glossary, which appears at the end of the chapter.
Assessments
A variety of assessments allow instructors to confirm core conceptual understanding, elicit brief explanations that demonstrate student understanding, and offer more in-depth assignments that enable learners to dive more deeply into a topic.
- Review Questions test for conceptual understanding of key concepts.
- Check Your Understanding Questions require students to explain concepts in words.
- Personal Application Questions dive deeply into the material to support longer reflection, group discussion, and life application of course concepts.
- Essay Questions require more complex and comprehensive analysis of concepts, including the intersection of topics as they are applied across the lifespan.
Answers to Questions in the Book
The end-of-chapter Review, Check Your Understanding, and Essay Questions are intended for homework assignments or classroom discussion; thus, only a limited number of student-facing answers for Review Questions are provided. Answers and sample answers are provided in the Instructor Solution Manual, for instructors to share with students at their discretion, as is standard for such resources.
About the Authors
Senior Contributing Authors
Diana K. Riser, Catawba College
Diana K. Riser holds a PhD in Developmental & Biological Psychology with a Minor in Women’s & Gender Studies from Virginia Tech. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Catawba College. Her teaching and scholarly work are focused on developmental psychology, risk and protective factors in human development, promoting resilience in survivors of child trauma, and promoting healthy parent-child relationships. In addition to her research in developmental psychology, she also does research on best practices in teaching and learning and has worked in various non-profit and public health areas to apply psychology to promoting healthy development. Diana is passionate about using the science of developmental psychology to improve lives and parent-child relationships. She currently is enjoying her own lifespan development with her spouse and two children.
Rose Spielman, Connecticut State Community College
Rose Spielman was the content lead for the OpenStax Introduction to Psychology textbook. She has worked as a licensed clinical psychologist for over 30 years, with the last ten years at the Connecticut Department of Developmental Services. She has also taught for decades, most recently at CT State Community College. She has a husband, two young adult children, and two rescue dogs. While working on Lifespan Development, Dr. Spielman was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disease, which attacks the body’s motor neurons. Prior to her ALS symptoms, Dr. Spielman enjoyed bicycling, camping, and hiking with family and friends.
David Biek, Middle Georgia State University
David Biek is the Dean of the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences at Middle Georgia State University. David earned his doctorate in developmental psychology at Cornell University and completed his master’s work at Columbia. His scholarly and applied work is focused on understanding the informal factors behind academic achievement in adolescents and young adults. David has served as co-chair for MaconAIM, a human service collaborative, as a board member for Carlyle Place – Atrium/Navicent Health in Macon, and he has organized a community-wide Thrive Summit in the middle Georgia region. He also serves on the statewide Executive Council for AARP Georgia. David lives in Forsyth, Georgia, with his wife and three children.
Contributing Authors
Aisha P. Adams, Catawba College
Alisa Beyer, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Ellen Cotter, Georgia Southwestern State University
Kathleen Hughes, University of Calgary
Deepti Karkhanis, Bellevue College
Kristopher J. Kimbler, Florida Gulf Coast University
Julie Lazzara, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Rebecca McDonald, Washington & Jefferson College
Ronald Mossler, Los Angeles Valley College
Paula Mullineaux, Hamline University
Amy Osmon, Daytona State College
Jason Spiegelman, Community College of Baltimore County
Erik Uliasz, Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School / Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth
John Woodman, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Reviewers
David Baskind, Delta College
Bakhtawar Bhadha, Pasadena City College
Ashley Biddle, Leeward Community College
Carla Bluhm, College of Coastal Georgia
John Broderick, Central Louisiana Technical Community College
L. Grant Canipe, The Chicago School
Amy Coren, Pasadena City College
Erica Gelven, Quinnipiac University
Jeffery Gray, Charleston Southern University
James Guinee, University of Central Arkansas
Tanya Harrell, Young Harris College
Alishia Huntoon, Oregon Institute of Technology
Jeannine Klein, Mohave Community College
Elizabeth Levin, Laurentian University
Megan Lorenz, Augustana College
Lisa Maag, East Carolina University
Ivan Mancinelli-Franconi, Clackamas Community College
Sylvia McCree-Huntley, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Julie McIntyre, Russell Sage College
Jan Mendoza, Golden West College
Tamara Monroe, Delaware Valley University
Susan O'Donnell, George Fox University
Lakshmi Raman, Oakland University
Pamela Ratvasky, The Ohio State University
Bridget Reigstad, Normandale Community College
Sherri Restauri, Coastal Carolina University
Jonathan Santo, University of Nebraska Omaha
Starlette M. Sinclair, Florida Gulf Coast University
Jon Skalski, Brigham Young University-Idaho
Jerry Sorrell, Tarrant County College
Rachelle Tannenbaum, Anne Arundel Community College
Karen Tinsley, Guilford College
Virginia Tompkins, The Ohio State University
Additional Resources
Student and Instructor Resources
We’ve compiled additional resources for both students and instructors, including Getting Started Guides, an instructor’s answer guide, test bank, and image slides. Instructor resources require a verified instructor account, which you can apply for when you log in or create your account on OpenStax.org. Take advantage of these resources to supplement your OpenStax book.
Instructor’s answer guide. The instructor’s answer guide provides assessment support including comprehensive guidance for essay questions.
Test bank. With over 400 true/false, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer questions in our test bank, instructors can customize tests to support a variety of course objectives. The test bank is available in Word format.
PowerPoint lecture slides. The PowerPoint slides provide images, key course concepts, and teacher notes as a starting place for instructors to build their lectures.
Academic Integrity
Academic integrity builds trust, understanding, equity, and genuine learning. While students may encounter significant challenges in their courses and their lives, doing their own work and maintaining a high degree of authenticity will result in meaningful outcomes that will extend far beyond their college career. Faculty, administrators, resource providers, and students should work together to maintain a fair and positive experience.
We realize that students benefit when academic integrity ground rules are established early in the course. To that end, OpenStax has created an interactive to aid with academic integrity discussions in your course.
At OpenStax we are also developing resources supporting authentic learning experiences and assessment. Please visit this book’s page for updates. For an in-depth review of academic integrity strategies, we highly recommend visiting the International Center of Academic Integrity (ICAI) website at https://academicintegrity.org/.
Community Hubs
OpenStax partners with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) to offer Community Hubs on OER Commons—a platform for instructors to share community-created resources that support OpenStax books, free of charge. Through our Community Hubs, instructors can upload their own materials or download resources to use in their own courses, including additional ancillaries, teaching material, multimedia, and relevant course content. We encourage instructors to join the hubs for the subjects most relevant to your teaching and research as an opportunity both to enrich your courses and to engage with other faculty. To reach the Community Hubs, visit www.oercommons.org/hubs/openstax.
Technology partners
As allies in making high-quality learning materials accessible, our technology partners offer optional low-cost tools that are integrated with OpenStax books. To access the technology options for your text, visit your book page on OpenStax.org.