ABSTRACT
As we usher in a new era of developmental science, we must confront many important theoretical and methodological challenges. Drawing largely on discus sion from previous chapters, this chapter outlines the most pressing of the chal lenges facing developmental science. As such, this chapter stands as synthesis of the book and becomes an agenda for the future. These challenges include the need to (1) achieve multi-level, multi-dimensional, temporal understandings of lives; (2) overcome barriers to interdisciplinary scholarship; (3) clarify personal biases; (4) move beyond the study of specific life periods; (5) find greater meaning and significance in research; (6) make multiple, and more systematic, comparisons; (7) understand age and forms of age structuring; (8) gather and share life-course Hafa; (9) analyze trajectories; (10) understand continuity and discontinuity, and (11) adequately measure change; (12) explicitly incorporate social contexts into our theory and research; better understand (13) socialization processes, (14) cohort, (15) variability, (16) the interdependence of lives, and (17) “successful” develop ment; (18) link social structure and human agency; and (19) further emerging debates on the chronologization, institutionalization, and standardization of lives. Each of these will be briefly highlighted in turn.
