The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals 6E

About our authors

Patricia Broderick is a research associate at the Bennett-Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State University and professor emerita, founder, and former director of the Stress Reduction Center at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Master's degree in Counseling from Villanova University and a Ph.D. in School Psychology from Temple University. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified school psychologist (K-12), and certified counselor (K-12).

Dr. Broderick has taught courses in Life Span Development, Educational Psychology, Stress Management, Mind-Body Health, and Counseling Theory and Practice to undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to this textbook and multiple research articles, she is the author of Learning to BREATHE: A Mindfulness Curriculum for Adolescents (New Harbinger Publications) and Mindfulness in the Secondary Classroom: A Guide for Teaching Adolescents (Norton).

Pamela Blewitt is Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova University, where she taught courses in Life Span Development, Parent/Child Transactional Processes, Child Psychopathology, and Research Design. She holds a Master's degree from Columbia University in special education, and she taught emotionally disturbed children in a variety of settings before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in Developmental Psychology. She investigates how young children learn words with a focus on identifying strategies for helping parents and teachers support their children's language development.

Her research has been published in a variety of professional journals, including the Journal of Educational Psychology and in Child Development, where she has served on the editorial board. Dr. Blewitt is a passionate advocate for young children and their parents and for the professionals who work with them. She has served as President of the Board for both the Delaware Valley Child Care Council and for the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children (now First Up! Champions for Early Education).