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Opportunities and challenges to the development of healthy children and youth living in diverse communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2013

Margaret Beale Spencer  and
Dena Phillips Swanson
Margaret Beale Spencer*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Dena Phillips Swanson
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Margaret Beale Spencer, Department of Comparative Human Development, 5730 Woodlawn Avenue, Number 202, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; E-mail: mbspencer@uchicago.edu.
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Abstract

The field of developmental psychopathology has seen growth in research focusing on interdisciplinarity and normative developmental processes, including context-linked coping and adaptations. However, there continues to be an uncomfortable and unarticulated perspective to view others as having culture and “the self” as representing the standard. A call for explicit cultural considerations in research is needed to augment the impact of these new and other significant conceptual contributions noted. Sociopolitical influences on social contexts relevant to the different trajectories associated with youths' opportunities and challenges are presented. We focus on macrolevel factors that frame contexts in which individual development occurs. A federal and educational policy is used to illustrate how unexamined cultural traditions and patterns embedded in research and policy impact development. These examples provide insight in presenting issues of vulnerability, particularly for youth, and afford opportunities to present advances and challenges paralleled in the developmental psychopathology field.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 25 , Issue 4pt2: Development and Psychopathology: A Vision Realized , November 2013 , pp. 1551 - 1566
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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