This article investigates socialist China's pedagogic treatment of individuality between 1949 and 1958, with a focus on the debates concerning "all-round development" and "teaching in accordance with aptitude," two principles that clashed regarding students' individuality. It reconstructs how educational bureaucrat and theorist…

This paper argues that sociocultural accounts of learning fail to answer the key question about learning--how is it possible? Accordingly, we should adopt an individualist bootstrapping methodology in providing a theory of learning. Such a methodology takes seriously the idea that learning is staged and distinguishes between a non-comprehending…

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) called for an increased emphasis on models of psychological service delivery that are primarily indirect, adult-focused, and geared toward systems-level change in the schools. They asserted that research in school psychology should not focus on the problems of individual children and youth but address the…

In this article, Peter Molenaar responds to three commentaries (this issue) on his article, "An Interpretation of Part of Gilbert Gottlieb's Legacy: Developmental Systems Theory Contra Developmental Behavior Genetics." He addresses aspects of relational developmental systems (RDS) mentioned and questions raised in each of the…

The concepts and paradigms "development", "evolution", and "developmental behavior genetics" target, in their statements, populations. The laws of genetics and evolution are supposed to apply to every single case in a population. It can be counted among the major contributions of Gottlieb (1992, 1995) to have pointed…

Molenaar's (2015) article concerns Developmental Systems Theory (DST) in relation to behavior genetics and he presents implications of DST for empirical research, especially the need for subject-specific studies. In this commentary, the article is discussed from a broader developmental science perspective, particularly regarded through the lens of…

This article describes a situative approach to studying motivation to learn in social contexts. We begin by contrasting this perspective to more prevalent psychological approaches to the study of motivation, describing epistemological and methodological differences that have constrained conversation between theoretical groups. We elaborate on…

The main theme of this paper concerns the persistent critique of Gilbert Gottlieb on developmental behavior genetics and my reactions to this critique, the latter changing from rejection to complete acceptation. Concise characterizations of developmental behavior genetics, developmental systems theory (to which Gottlieb made essential…

In this response to "A Quality of Giftedness," ("Gifted and Talented International" v27 n2 p13-71 2012) by Prof. Dr. Joan Freeman, John Anchan comments that Freeman's article raises a number of issues that challenge conventional train of thoughts. It is all about why one person can train endlessly and yet, never keep a tune,…

Growth, maturation, and development dominate the daily lives of children and adolescents for approximately the first 2 decades of life. Growth and maturation are biological processes, while development is largely a behavioral process. The 3 processes occur simultaneously and interact. They can be influenced by physical activity and also can…

In this article I explore Amartya Sen's contention that individual freedom represents both the objective of development and the means through which development is to take place. Examining the conceptualisation of freedom central to Sen's capability approach, I distinguish between two notions of freedom, autonomy and agency, where the former…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer an exciting range of opportunities to widen access and participation in education. The massive and open nature of MOOCs places the control of learning at the discretion of the learner. Therefore, it is essential to understand learner behaviour. This paper examines the psychological considerations inherent…

While commitment to a universal entitlement to education is highly desirable, some significant limitations have been identified in the right to education as currently expressed and implemented. This article assesses the contribution that the capabilities approach can make in this regard. While some proponents have suggested that capabilities…

Two Afro Caribbean immigrants share our individual experiences of navigating the United States (US) academy, and the strengths we derived in the process. We explore the questions: How do we make meaning of our experiences as members of the academe? What accounts for our ability to perform, develop, and grow as scholars in the US? We used the…

Growth mixture modeling (GMM) is a method for identifying multiple unobserved sub-populations, describing longitudinal change within each unobserved sub-population, and examining differences in change among unobserved sub-populations. We provide a practical primer that may be useful for researchers beginning to incorporate GMM analysis into their…