ABSTRACT
Like the naive soul who was surprised and impressed to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life, I was surprised and impressed to discover a few years ago that the studies of children and their everyday environments that I have been involved in since 1948 are studies of development in context. Indeed, the founders of the program of research identified as ecological psychology, Roger G. Barker and Herbert F. Wright at the University of Kansas, might well be considered early pioneers in research on development in context. They were hard at work developing new research methods for studying the everyday behavior of children in the ordinary, real-life settings of home, school, playground, drugstores, streets and sidewalks, basketball games, and sunday schools when most students of development were limiting their research to the experimental laboratory, the testing booth, or the interview room. It is the purpose of this chapter to review some of the highlights of this line of research by these pioneers and their associates over the past 40 years and to suggest possible directions for future development.
