This article provides an introduction to the idiographic approach ("N = 1" research) in developmental psychology and an overview of methodological and statistical techniques employed to address the study of within-individual variability in development. Through a popularization of the idiographic approach and associated statistical…

This article addresses the problem of how we theorise in writing about higher education through a reconstruction and interrogation of my previous work. I argue that theorising is messy, incomplete and a non-reductive process. Using C. Wright-Mills' notion of craft and Val Hey's insights into theorists who come to haunt us, I retrace the steps…

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the revival of Heinz Werner's organismic-developmental theory by considering some of its key claims in relation to contemporary developmental theory and research. The organismic-developmental definition of development in terms of differentiation and integration is first discussed in relation to…

Action research and activity theory are considered by a number of followers as socio-critical approaches, whereas others do not relate them to social-criticism and use them merely as methods to improve practice. This article searches for general insights in Kurt Lewin's and Lev S. Vygotsky's work into how one proceeds and acts critically. In their…

Studying human development involves describing, explaining, and optimizing intraindividual change and interindividual differences in such change and, as such, requires longitudinal research. The selection of the appropriate type of longitudinal design requires selecting the option that best addresses the theoretical questions asked about…

The question as to how action research (AR) is related to cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is not answerable in categorical terms. Both CHAT and AR have been variously interpreted and much depends on the individual biographies of those who pronounce on their relationship. The aim of this paper is to show how action research, conducted…

This article presents an overview of quantitative methodologies for the study of stage-sequential development based on extensions of Markov chain modeling. Four methods are presented that exemplify the flexibility of this approach: the manifest Markov model, the latent Markov model, latent transition analysis, and the mixture latent Markov model.…

Amartya Sen's capability approach creates an evaluative space within which individual well-being is considered in ways that diverge from dominant utilitarian views. Instead of measuring well-being based on the accumulation of wealth and resources by individuals and nations, the capability approach focuses on the opportunities (capabilities) an…

This article provides an overview of the origins and use of relational data analysis (RDA). RDA is a multidimensional, multiphasic framework for unifying data analytic strategies across dimensions (quantitative/qualitative, causal/structural, observation/interpretation, etc.) and phases of analyses (conceptual, theoretical, and research analyses).…

The author addresses the development and implementation of a service-learning project for an undergraduate course in which students interview immigrant women, incorporate the interviewees' experiences into an analytical paper, and present the findings at the end of the semester. Students are required to use C. Wright Mills's concepts of history…

Multiple methods are vital to understanding development as a dynamic, transactional process. This article focuses on the ways in which quantitative and qualitative methodologies can be combined to enrich developmental science and the study of human development, focusing on the practical questions of "when" and "how." Research situations that may…

The intention of this article is to consider the use of narrative and rhetorical inquiry as research methods. I construct a mathematical biography of one elementary teacher trainee, Sirpa, who had performed well in her advanced mathematics course in upper secondary school. I describe her development as a mathematics teacher during teacher…

The notion of researcher as craftsman is not new. This article takes the analogy further, exploring the similarities between the research student's journey and the artisan's transition from apprentice to journeyman to member of the guild, in the light of the author's own PhD experience. Having completed her apprenticeship with the MSc, she…

This is an essay about the transformative power of interpretive epistemologies for those who come into the social sciences seeking meaning in the messiness of human experience. It is about how an epistemological exercise gave the author symbolic tools to become sentient of his father's subjective oppressive force in his life--with the man living…

Presents a new approach that extends conventional random coefficient growth models to incorporate a categorical latent trajectory variable representing latent classes or mixtures. Provides a didactic example of this new methodology using adolescent alcohol use data and discusses the method as a tool for mapping hypotheses of development onto…