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For decades there hasn't been an integrative theory of development, only theories about various developmental domains such as language acquisition, personality, and peer relations. Two leading developmentalists, Donald Ford and Richard Lerner, present the first integrative theory on human development. Through a synthesis of developmental contextualism and the Living Systems Framework, the authors develop a theory that examines how a person carries out transactions with their environment and through that transaction how their biological, psychological, behavioral, and environmental elements change or remain constant. They also offer important implications of Developmental Systems Theory (DST) for research, implications for use in educational and clinical settings, and the usefulness of DST in the formulation of social policy. By integrating the results from many research investigations into a larger framework, Developmental Systems Theory offers researchers, professionals, and students a better understanding of how multiple elements interact and shape a person's life. "Developmental Systems Theory will play an important role in the shaping of developmentalists' research agendas in the 1990s. It aims for the main prize: the representation of the complex, dynamic organization of variables across time and contexts. Ford and Lerner's impressive grasp of developmental principles and theory, system thinking, and such key ideas as (1) the distinction and interplay between intraindividual variability and interindividual stability, variability, and change; (2) the unity of structure and function; (3) how useful theory is developed; and (4) the need for strengthening current methodological tools and creating newer, more appropriate ones all are combined to form a volume that belongs in the working libraries of active social, behavioral, and biological scientists." --John R. Nesselroade, University of Virginia "This work has a valuable role to play on two levels: first, on the theoretical level, in synthesizing the efforts this century to understand the functioning and evolution of the human being and in proposing an epistemological background and an improved model of the development of the person. It is also important on the practical level, in particular for its effort to cleanse the notion of development from the ideological connotations it often carries. It also opens the way for further developments in the context of systems science. It shows that the classical cybernetic paradigm can still help to make improved modelization in the human sciences." --Systems Practice

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CONTENTS
Preface = ⅶ
1. The Past as Prologue to the Present = 1
 Changes in Philosophy and Theory in Human Development = 3
 Contextual Metamodels and Change = 10
 Mechanistic, Organismic, and Developmental Contextualism Metamodels Compared = 12
 Next Steps = 26
2. The Concepts of Stability, Variability, Change, and Development = 27
 Differences, Variability, and Change = 28
 Components of a Definition of Development = 37
 A Provisional Definition of Development = 46
 Other Concepts About Change = 51
 Next Steps = 53
3. Developmental Contextualism: Biology and Context as the Liberators of Human Potential = 54
 Multivariate, Multilevel Organization = 54
 The Fused Influences of Biology and Context on Development = 59
 Heredity-Environment Dynamic Interactions = 64
 Biology and the Contexts of Human Life = 76
 Individuals' Behavior as the Means of Fusing the Influences of Biology and Context on Development = 80
 Summary = 87
 Next Steps = 87
4. The Person as an Open, Self-Regulating, Self-Constructing System = 91
 Complex Organization and the Concept of System = 93
 The Person as a Living System = 102
 System Component Structures and Functions = 111
 What Can Develop? = 135
 When Does Development Occur? = 143
 Next Steps = 145
5. Processes and Dynamics in Developmental Systems Theory = 147
 Development Described as a Sequence of Outcomes = 148
 Outcomes, Processes, and Dynamics = 149
 Three Types of Change-Related Processes = 151
 Conditions That Facilitate and Constrain Change and Development = 159
 Mechanisms of Change and Development = 165
 Living Systems Dynamics and Developmental Processes = 168
 Stability-Maintaining Processes = 173
 Incremental-Change Processes = 178
 Transformational Change Processes = 193
 Developmental Pathways Through Life Emerge From the Operation of All Three Processes = 200
 Summary and Implications = 203
 Final Steps = 206
6. The Present as Prologue to the Future = 207
 Implications for Research Questions = 208
 Implications for Research Methods = 217
 Implications for Professional Interventions = 221
 Implications for Social Policy = 228
 In Conclusion = 230
References = 232
Name Index = 247
Subject Index = 252
About the Authors = 258