Exploring Lifespan Development

This shorter, essentials version of Berk’s best-selling Development Through the Lifespan, 5/e, covers the same topics and contains the same number of chapters, but presents only the essential information with an exceptionally strong emphasis on applications.Exploring Lifespan Development includes all the features Berk’s texts are known for: Engaging writing style, exceptional cross-cultural focus, rich examples, the most up-to-date research, and practical applications that help students relate the subject to their personal and professional lives.

Laura Berk, renowned professor and researcher, has refashioned her text to provide the core information in the field with an exceptionally strong emphasis on applications.  Visually stunning, pedagogically balanced, and fully integrated, the Exploring edition has all the great features of Development Through the Lifespan, 5e, in an abbreviated form.  The latest theories and findings in the field are made accessible to students in a manageable and relevant way.

Berk’s signature storytelling style invites students to actively learn beside the text’s “characters,” who share their influential experiences and developmental milestones. Students are provided with an exceptionally clear and coherent understanding of the sequence and underlying processes of human development, emphasizing the interrelatedness of all domains―physical, cognitive, emotional, social―throughout the text narrative and in special features.

Berk also helps students connect their learning to their personal and professional areas of interest.  Her voice comes through when speaking directly about issues students will face in their future pursuits as parents, educators, heath care providers, social workers, and researchers.  As members of a global and diverse human community, students are called to intelligently approach the responsibility of understanding and responding to the needs and concerns of both young and old. 

Berk presents the most important classic and emerging theories in an especially clear, coherent, engaging writing style, with a multitude of research-based, real-world, and cross-cultural examples. Strengthening the connections among developmental domains and highlighting the application of theories and research to the real world, this text presents the most important scholarship in the changing field of human development.

Laura E. Berk is a distinguished professor of psychology at Illinois State University, where she has taught human development to both undergraduate and graduate students for more than three decades. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in child development and educational psychology from the University of Chicago.  She has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University, UCLA, Stanford University, and the University of South Australia.

    Berk has published widely on the effects of school environments on children’s development, the development of private speech, and most recently the role of make-believe play in development. Her research has been funded by the U.S. Office of Education and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It has appeared in many prominent journals, including Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Her empirical studies have attracted the attention of the general public, leading to contributions to Psychology Today and Scientific American.  She has also been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and in Parents Magazine,Wondertime, and Reader’s Digest.

    Berk has served as a research editor for Young Children and a consulting editor for Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Currently, she is an associate editor for the Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology. She is a frequent contributor to edited volumes on early childhood development, having recently authored chapters on the importance of parenting, on make-believe play and self-regulation, and on the kindergarten child. She has also written the chapter on development for The Many Faces of Psychological Research in the Twenty-First Century (Society for the Teaching of Psychology); the article on social development for The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion; the article on Vygotsky for the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science; and the chapter on storytelling as a teaching strategy for Voices of Experience: Memorable Talks from the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (Association for Psychological Science).

    Berk’s books include Private Speech: From Social Interaction to Self-Regulation; Scaffolding Children’s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education; Landscapes of Development: An Anthology of Readings; and A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence. In addition to Exploring Lifespan Development, she is author of the best-selling texts Child Development and Infants, Children, and Adolescents, andDevelopment Through the Lifespan published by Allyn and Bacon. Her book for parents and teachers is Awakening Children’s Minds: How Parents and Teachers Can Make a Difference.

    Berk is active in work for children’s causes. In addition to service in her home community, she is a member of the national board of directors and chair of the central region advisory board of Jumpstart, a nonprofit organization that provides one-to-one literacy intervention to thousands of low-income preschoolers across the United States, using college and university students as interveners. Berk is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division 7: Developmental Psychology.