Global challenges for developmental psychology: fostering future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts

ABSTRACT

This introduction of the special issue on ‘Global Challenges for Developmental Psychology’ argues that although developmental science is international, a European perspective is important, for at least three reasons: developmental psychology stems from Europe, there are specific themes and issues within Europe that ask for evidence-based solutions, and research in Europe with its many languages and fault-lines can be exemplary for global research. Global challenges are asking for future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts. Future-orientation can be found within the papers of this special issue on two levels: (1) when future developments guide the choice of research topics, and (2) when children need to be prepared for the future. The first level describes to which future challenges researchers aim to contribute knowledge, e.g., when investigating climate change, social inequalities, or digital technologies. On the second-level researchers aim to develop means to prepare children for a positive future, e.g., by fostering democratic and political competencies, by understanding children’s rights, by offering interventions to prevent bullying, or by stimulating school engagement. Tackling global challenges also asks for cooperative and collective efforts. This implies that research should be considered as teamwork. The papers in this issue offer very nice examples of precisely that.

KEYWORDS:

• Global challenges
• European developmental psychology
• future orientation
• cooperation
• collective action

In this introductory paper, we first argue why it is important to have a European Association of Developmental Psychology (EADP) as well as a European Journal of Developmental Psychology (EJDP). We then describe the research agenda of the EADP by summarizing the main topics of the presidential addresses since its foundation. Finally, we offer an overview of the papers that have been collected for this special issue and conclude that European developmental psychology already has much to offer to help framing, understanding, and ultimately coping with global challenges.

A European journal, or a global journal?

When European Journal of Developmental Psychology (EJDP) started in 2004, many colleagues from different countries were asking: Why a European journal? The question was always accompanied by the rhetoric question: Is science not global, universal? The editor of this journal wrote: ‘It is quite remarkable that sometimes the same person who believes that science is international, and that therefore there is no need for a regional journal, has never asked such questions about an American Journal’ (Koops, 2009a). To mention a remarkable example: Mike Rutter, a well-known and highly respected developmental psychopathologist, mailed that he didn’t think that a European Journal is a good idea because science is international. Confronted with the response: ‘It is remarkable that you publish without hesitation in the British Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and in the British Journal of Psychiatry’, the highly respected scholar responded that indeed he had not reflected sufficiently and offered his collaboration by publishing early in the journal (Rutter, 2005) to help it to get impact. Of course, the founding editors of the journal (Michel Deleau, Sandy Jackson, and Willem Koops) realized that developmental psychology is international and universal, but that at the same time it can be useful to have a European focus and outlet (as Rutter agreed). To have a European perspective (and journal) are at least three reasons: 1) international developmental psychology stems from Europe, 2) in Europe there are specific issues and themes of high priority that ask for evidence-based solutions, and 3) cross cultural research within Europe, with its different languages and many fault lines (see Koops, 2009b) can be exemplary for global cross-cultural research.

Research themes of the European Association for developmental Psychology (EADP)

To get an impression of the policy of the European Association for Developmental Psychology (EADP), as reflected within its flagship journal The European Journal of Developmental Psychology (EJDP), it is informative to look at the presidential addresses that have been published in the EJDP over the years. These addresses describe the scientific perspectives of the EADP presidents, leading to research initiatives of the whole association, in turn leading to special sections and special issues in the EJDP, as well as programmes for PhD trainings and scientific meetings. Here, we concentrate on the content of the presidential addresses.

The first presidential address (Koops, 2004) is entitled ‘Imaging childhood in European history and developmental psychology’. It analyses the cultural history of childhood and the relationship of developmental psychology and education with everyday images of childhood through historical time. This presidential address makes clear how developmental psychology itself came into existence in the 19^th century. The paper is mainly a plea to understand the history of developmental psychology from the study of the cultural history of childhood and education, as well as the other way around. The paper is also a plea to understand the influence of developmental psychology on the everyday lay images of children and on education. The journal published several papers (Stearns, 2009a, 2009b; Zuckerman, 2009) as well as special issues (Koops, 2012a, 2012c,; Koops & Kessel, 2015, 2016, 2019) on this theme.

The second presidential address was written by Christiane Spiel (Spiel, 2009). The paper invites European developmental psychologists to transfer scientific knowledge into evidence-based practice and programmes to help fostering positive child and youth development. Two applied empirical examples were given in this paper: inter-ethnic friendships and bullying prevention. Both examples refer to two general subjects that have since been in the centre of the interest of EADP: immigrant youth’s social integration and adjustment, as well as bullying research and prevention. Several special issues of the EJDP are continuing to appear on these topics (Bayram-Özdemir et al., forthcoming; Menesini & Spiel, 2012, Calpin et al., 2021; Oppenheimer & Barrett, 2011; Koops, 2012a, 2012b Strohmeier & Schmitt-Rodermund, 2008).

The third presidential address was written by Maria José Rodrigo. She put forward the topic of promoting positive parenting (Rodrigo, 2010). This very important topic is intending to make developmental psychology pedagogical relevant, by developing evidence-based parenting practices and programmes. Her proposal led to a scientific symposium, which resulted in a special issue (Rodrigo et al., 2012).

The next presidential address was written by Luc Goossens (Goossens, 2009). He talked about ‘genes, environments, and interactions as a new challenge for European developmental psychology’. At that time, the topic was very timely: during the entire 15th conference of the EADP at which Goossens did his presentation, there were invited addresses, symposia, and ongoing discussions in and outside the conference hall circling around gene–environment interactions. All this was published in a special issue (Koops, 2012a) Goossens made the relevance of gene–environment interactions for developmental research very clear to the members of the EADP.

The following presidential address by Frosso Motti-Stefanidi put the topic of immigrant youth adaptation in the centre of the research policy of EADP (Motti-Stefanidi, 2015). Her research programme that focusses on the resilience and positive adaptation of immigrant youth, was timely and followed by a related special issue (Motti-Stefanidi & Cicognani, 2018). Her description of the research on youth adaptation circled around the concepts of risk and resilience. In particular, the growing interest of EADP in resilience in developing systems led to another special issue (Borge et al., 2016).

Ersilia Menesini talked in her presidential address about an individual by context approach to bullying (Menesini, 2019). This paper was again a very strong plea for translating knowledge into evidence-based interventions, but it also represents a very important theoretical contribution by promoting a bio-socio-ecological understanding of development. Her address built partly on earlier work resulting in a special issue (Menesini & Spiel, 2012) and got a follow-up in another special issue (Colpin et al., 2021).

The next presidential address was written by Katariina Salmelo-Aro on ‘Dark and bright sides of thriving – school burnout and engagement in the Finnish context’ (Salmela-Aro, 2017). She made clear that school burnout can spill over to later depression, school dropout and internet addiction, while engagement can lead to overall satisfaction with life and success in educational pathways. By linking school engagement to context variables like immigrant status, excessive internet use, etc., this work on school-engagement relates to many of the topics published in the EJDP over the last decades.

Finally, there is the presidential address written by Dagmar Strohmeier entitled ‘Global societal challenges: A plea for strong voices from developmental psychology’ (Strohmeier, this issue) This address is included in this issue of EJDP. It offered the motivation to create this special issue.

From these presidential addresses and related special issues, there looms a picture of developmental psychology in which attention is offered to the cultural-historical embeddedness of the field and its research, an emphasis on evidence-based practice in important areas like immigrant youth adaptation, bullying prevention, school engagement and digital competencies. The following paragraph summarizes the papers that were collected for this special issue and links them to this general picture that has been drawn from the presidential addresses published in the EJDP so far.

Overview of the papers in this special issue

In her presidential address, Dagmar Strohmeier stimulated the members of the European Society for Developmental psychology to in-depth think about the possibilities of developmental psychology to contribute to address well-known global challenges like climate change, pandemics, racial justice, cultural and linguistic diversity, violence, etc. She believes that a relational developmental theoretical perspective could be helpful to understand the essential reciprocal multi-level processes involved in complex global challenges and illustrates that view with developmental research in the domains of COVID-19, climate change and resilience. She infers from existing research that coping with global challenges is asking for future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts. To develop basic competences for these efforts developmental psychological insights should be used in educational settings. An important aim of developmental psychology should be the narrowing of the implementation gap, which is: conducting research that leads to more successful implementation, by understanding the specificities of the context, within implementation has to take place.

This presidential address does not intend to offer solutions, but more modest wants to stimulate and motivate to open research windows: windows offering perspectives to develop strong voices from developmental psychology. We hope that the papers in this special issue will convincingly demonstrate that developmental psychology already has such strong voices, and they can be developed even further in the future.

The next paper, by Maria Ojala, is dedicated to the implications of climate change for research in developmental psychology. The overview of relevant research shows four interrelated topics: climate change and mental wellbeing, coping with climate change, private-sphere pro-environmental behaviour as a form of pro-social development, and climate change and political socialization. It is clear that more longitudinal and intervention studies are needed. The paper opens new windows for highly needed future research on climate change and psychological development.

Next, there are two papers on the role of digitalization in psychological development. The paper by David Smahel, Hayriye Gulec, Adela Lokajova, Lenka Dedkova, and Hana Machackova continues with the important question of how we can integrate theories from developmental psychology and those of the use of digital technologies in online communications. The authors propose the Integrative Model of ICT Effects on Adolescents’ Well-being (iMEW), which integrates the Problem Behavior Theory (Jessor, 2014) from developmental psychology and the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013) from media communications and draws inspiration from Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) and the Health Belief Model (Champion & Skinner, 2008). The authors claim that this model brings a more comprehensive understanding to adolescents’ development and the effects of ICTs on their well-being, and that the model can serve as a roadmap for research that focuses on the effect of ICT.

The paper by Bilge Selçuk, Cansel Karakaş, İpec Tuncay and Beril Can analyses risks for children in low- and middle-income countries. The paper suggests research possibilities to reduce the gap between research on children in advantaged versus disadvantaged contexts. The authors believe that the digital revolution, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, offers possibilities to open new ways to support healthy development and psychological well-being in socio-economically or developmentally disadvantaged populations. The acceleration of the digital transformation may also allow the study of the human mind and behaviour in countries that are currently underrepresented in developmental research.

The following three papers are about ethnic racial identity and immigrant youth’s social integration and adjustment,

Linda Juang, together with 19 co-authors/researchers, offer a paper on the ethnic-racial identity project in Europe. It is based on the application of a school-based intervention that has been developed in the US (the Identity Project, see Umaña-Taylor & Douglass, 2017) and was later on adapted and implemented in eight European countries. The role of sociohistorical context for identity development has led to systematic adaptations of the original intervention programme to consider the specificities of national and regional cultural contexts. The description of these adaptations and the process of analysing them will open perspectives for a global orientation of developmental psychology, by arriving at psychological constructs that can appropriately be studied across cultural contexts.

Metin Özdemir & Sevgi Bayram Özdemir follow with a paper on the important and under-researched role of societal belongingness in understanding immigrant youth’s social integration and adjustment. Their new instrument to measure societal belongingness (the Adolescents’ Societal Belongingness Scale, ASBS) opens new ways for research. The paper demonstrates the sound psychometric qualities of the new instrument.

The research by Frosso Motti-Stefanidi, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, and Jens Asendorpf tested the hypothesis that disengagement from school by immigrant-origin youth will lead to lower involvement with the national culture and higher involvement with the ethnic culture over time. In a three-wave longitudinal study comprising immigrant adolescents in Greece, the authors found that lower academic achievement cascaded to decreases in school engagement over time, which in turn cascaded to decreases in national but increases in ethnic involvement over time. This study highlights the importance of school success of immigrant-origin youth, because it longitudinally related to acculturative behaviour.

After these three studies focusing on ethnic racial identity and immigrant youth, the series of papers is followed by two comprehensive studies on democratic and political competencies.

The first paper studies how democratic competencies and children’s understandings of their rights can be taught in schools located in five European countries. Harriet Tenenbaum together with nine co-authors/researchers discuss ways to increase the efficacy of school-based interventions. These authors made use of a novel curriculum based on the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) developed by the Council of Europe (Barrett et al., 2018). Pupils from Bulgaria, Italy, Norway, Romania, and Spain attended schools in which the curriculum was taught, whereas pupils from comparison groups attended schools in the same city where the curriculum was not taught. Results show that children in the intervention groups increased their endorsement of children’s rights at post-tests more than did children in the intervention group. The authors suggest implementing RFCDC as widely as possible in schools all over the world.

The next paper by Iana Tzankova, Cinzia Albanesi, Gabriele Prati, and Elvira Cicognani analyses the importance of school characteristics for the development of civic and political attitudes and activities among adolescents. The two-wave longitudinal data comprising 1589 students living in Italy, Sweden, Germany, and the Czech Republic demonstrate that high levels of student participation, critical reflection and democratic climate on school level are longitudinally associated with high levels of political trust, political efficacy and political efficacy which are in turn concurrently associated with different forms of participation activities. The study demonstrates the importance of a participative environment that invites reflection and enables efficacy and trust to stimulate political participation of adolescents.

Last but not least, the special issue covers two papers on the (global) problem of bullying.

To begin with, Christina Salmivalli presents a new perspective on the prevention of school bullying. Instead of investigating and better understanding average anti-bullying programme effects, she argues that it might be insightful to better understand the characteristics and conditions of youth who remain victimized or continue to bully others despite the successful implementation of universal and targeted interventions. She makes clear that research should also try to identify factors – at multiple levels – that are related to intervention failure instead of just focusing on intervention successes.

Finally, Robert Thornberg’s paper discusses the associations between moral disengagement and bullying and offers another contribution to the future of a successful global bullying research programme. The aim of Thornberg’s review was to examine the longitudinal relationship between moral disengagement (MD) and bullying among school-aged children and adolescents. A large part of the studies that the author involved in his analysis examined and found that MD predicts subsequent bullying. Only a few studies have investigated whether bullying predicts subsequent MD, and the findings were mixed. Thornberg’s paper offers important suggestions on how to conduct future longitudinal research to disentangle the longitudinal associations between MD and bullying.

Together, the papers collected for this special issue clearly demonstrate the global relevance of developmental research. First, there is a roadmap for studying climate change in relation to human development. Second, we find an in-depth interest in digital technologies, in particular, on their effects on adolescent well-being. Let’s share the hope of Selçuk et al. that the digital revolution may help us to reduce the global widening gap between children in advantaged and disadvantaged contexts. Then, there is quite impressive work on ethnic racial identity and immigrant youth’s social integration and adjustment. Indeed, as wished for in several presidential addresses and as demonstrated in studies from several earlier special issues, evidence-based interventions are being developed, adapted, implemented, and evaluated in developmental research. Developmental psychologists also develop innovative instruments like the new measure on societal belongingness that has been included in this special issue. Furthermore, an evidence-based curriculum to develop children’s democratic and political competences has been developed, implemented in several European countries, evaluated, and subsequently improved. Possibilities for schools to contribute to the development of civic and political attitudes and activities have been explored and found. Finally, some challenges around bullying and bullying prevention have been tackled, and avenues for future research and prevention were outlined.

Concluding remarks

In Strohmeier’s presidential address it is stated that global challenges need high levels of future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts. Future-orientation can be found within the papers of this special issue on two levels. Firstly, when researchers are led by future developments when choosing their research topics and secondly, when researchers search for ways how to prepare children, adolescents, and adults for the future. The papers that dealt with climate change, digital technologies and bullying are clear examples of the first level. On the second level, several papers aimed to develop means to prepare children for a positive future by looking at democratic and political competencies, by understanding children’s rights, by offering interventions to prevent bullying, or by stimulating school engagement. Strohmeier also stressed the necessity of cooperative and collective efforts. This also implies that research should be considered as teamwork. The papers in this issue offer very nice examples of precisely that.

We realize that the papers in this issue are no more than a sample demonstrating the global relevance of research within Europe. The selected papers are not even a representative sample, because there is a lot of research on topics in European developmental psychology that has not been covered in this issue. We cannot be complete in any sense. But we hope that we convinced the readers that European developmental psychology takes global societal challenges very seriously and is committed to work to develop meaningful contributions to mitigate them. For us, the papers collected in this special issue demonstrate that European developmental psychology has strong voices to help coping with global challenges.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).