ABSTRACT
Although interest in the context of human development has a long history in philosophy and social science (for reviews see Dixon & Nesselroade, 1983; Kaplan, 1983), contextual philosophy (e.g., Pepper, 1942) began to attract increasing interest from psychologists during the late 1960s (e.g., see Bandura, 1978; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Jenkins, 1974; Kuo, 1967; Rosnow & Georgoudi, 1986; Sarbin, 1977). There were at least two reasons for this burgeoning interest. They pertain to metatheoretical issues about models of human development and to empirical findings about relations between individual development and social or historical change.
