Understanding Human Development Across Time Lecture 4

Major themes of the life course perspective 4. Human Agency in making Choices • This means the use of personal power to achieve ones’ goal • The individual life course is constructed by the choices and actions individuals take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social economic circumstances Albert Bandura • He proses that human are agentic meaning they are capable of intentionally influencing their own functioning and life circumstances • Bandura argued that human are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them. • Bandura introduced the two key concepts concerning human agency: Self- efficacy i.e. sense of personal competence Efficacy expectation i.e. the expectation that one can personally accomplish a goal • Bandura further developed the psychological theory of human agency which consists of three mode of human agency: Personal agency: exercised individually using personal influence to shape environmental events or one’s own behaviour Proxy agency: exercised to influenced other who have greater resources to act on one’s behalf to meet needs and accomplish goals Collective agency: exercised on the group level when people act together to meet needs and accomplish goals • Bandura argues that everyday life requires the use of all three modes of agency: There are many circumstances where individuals can exercise personal agency to shape situations However, there are many situations over which individual do not have direct control, hence must seek out other who have greater influence to act on their behalf Other circumstances exist in which goals are only achieved or more easily and comprehensively achievable by working collectively with others Major themes of the life course perspective 5. Diversity in life course trajectories • The LCP assert that there is much diversity in life course pathways as a result of cohort variations, social class, culture, gender and individual agency • For instance, gender-women’s life course trajectories are flexible while men’s life course trajectories are more rigidly structured with fewer discontinuities • Life course trajectories also vary by social class: Affluent youth go to school and postpone their entry into adult roles of work and family Less affluent youth, however, often enter earlier into marriage, parenting and employment Major themes of the life course perspective 6. Developmental risk and protection • LCP contends that experiences with one life transition or life event have an impact on subsequent transitions and life events, and may either protect that life course trajectory or put it at risk • Childhood event sometimes shape people’s lives 40 or 50 years later • School of thought for development risk and protection: Sociology: interested in cumulative advantage/ cumulative disadvantage Ecological development psychology: interested in risk, protection, and resilience Sociology: cumulative advantage/ cumulative disadvantage • Cumulative advantage and cumulative disadvantage are socially constructed • Social institution and societal structures develop mechanisms that ensure increasing advantage for those who succeed early in life and increasing disadvantage for those who struggle • Privilege is sometimes referred to as a trajectory of unearned advantage Children with affluent parents versus children with poor family • Young children with affluent parents: Attend enriched early childhood program then go to well resourced primary and secondary school then have successful university career which position them for well paid occupations which provide opportunities for good health maintenance which position them for healthy secure old age • Young children with poor parents: More likely to attend under equipped school which later experience school failure or dropout then they are unsuccessful in university career which then experience high unemployment and arrive at old age with compromised health and limited economic resources Ecological developmental risk protection • Focus on identifying multidimensional risk factors, or factors at one stage of development that increase the probability of developing and maintaining problem conditions at later stage • Also looks at individuals who have adapted successful in face of risk and have identified protective factors (resources) that decrease the probability of developing and maintaining problem condition • Note  There have been attempts to integrate the two schools of thought  Neither of these argues that early deprivations and traumas inevitably lead to a trajectory of failure  Cumulative processes are reversible under some condition, particularly when human agency is exercised, resources are mobilized, and environmental condition Ecological developmental risk protection Human may use protective factors to assist in ‘selfrighting’ process over the life course to farewell in the face of adversity, a process known as resilience Protective factors provide the antidote to risk factors and minimize the inevitability of a trajectory of failure