  Home |
| About the Society |
| Awards |
 News |
  General News |
 Newsletters |
| Events |
| Membership |
| Journal |
| Links of Interest |
| Contact Us |
| Kandersteg Declaration Against Bullying |
 |
The first issue of this refreshed Newsletter is a major event: it shows in concrete form the beginning of a new period for the Society. The time has come now to provide to all present and future members a precise view of the turn the Society has now taken.
The ESDP was founded in 1994 after numerous and active debates, especially these last ten years under the impetus of George Butterworth and Sandy Jackson. This foundation arose from the experience of managing biennal European Conferences on Developmental Psychology as regional conferences of the ISSBD. The first one was held in Groningen, then in Rome, Budapest, Stirling, Sevilla, Bonn, and Crakov. The three last ones: Rennes, Spetses and Uppsala, as well as the coming Milan Conference have been held under the official auspices of ESDP.
The rising number of participants and the quality of the contributions, as well as the process of European Construction have led naturally to the idea of a separate organisation; of a new Society "of its own".
During its first period of construction, as many of you know, the ESDP has experienced profound shock from the untimely death of George Butterworth. It has taken some while, firstly to achieve the internal organisation of the Society and, then, to elaborate a developmental trajectory for the Society.
We are now engaged in a new and important phase of realising this, which I will present in some detail in the following paragraphs.
The publication of this newsletter is one of the means to maintain links between members and the Society. It will give information about what is going on and what is to happen in the future. It will also disseminate information about constructive initiatives of the members (for example organisation of scientific networks, of workshops or summer schools, etc…). Finally, it will be also a means of promoting the Society.
We have decided also to create a new scientific journal: the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, that will be published as the Journal of the Society.
I have to make clear here that the Society as such has never had its own journal. It happened a few years ago that George Butterworth founded Developmental Science. As he was the President of the Society and the Editor of the Journal, there was a link between the journal and the Society. But this link was personal and not structural. It was clear also that the editorial policy of the publisher for this Journal was too specific to cover the range of interests of the majority of the members of the Society. Thus we decided to found a new journal.
The European Journal of Developmental Psychology will be published by the British publisher Psychology Press. It will have 4 issues per year and is intended to cover all fields of developmental psychology (see aims and scope of the Journal in this same Newsletter). The first issue for volume 1 is to appear in early 2004.
A very interesting promotional offer will be made to the participants during the next European Conference in Milan (Aug 2003). From the 2005 European Conference (Tenerife) the subscription to the Journal will be included in the membership of the Society.
Psychology Press will also take in charge the publication of this Newsletter in the near future.
The European Conferences will continue to be held on the basis of one meeting every two years. The next two will be held in Milano (August 2003) and Tenerife (summer 2005).
The place of the following one (2007) has to be chosen during the Milan Conference and I ask publicly here for proposals. Considering the most recent Conferences, proposals coming from the northern and/or eastern part of Europe will be especially welcome.
The future conferences will continue to include on an international basis invited lectures and symposia as well as proposed symposia, poster workshops and individual posters. But we would like also to use them as a means to strengthen the links between the members and European scientific networks. This will be explained in more detail below.
It is one of our major goals that the ESDP should contribute to the organisation of scientific networks in Europe. We invite the members of the society to propose symposia and poster workshops related to the Socrates/Erasmus and/or the 5th/6th PCRDT programs in which they are involved. This will also be an occasion to present these networks and to encourage other scientists (especially young ones) to join them .
In the same manner, ESDP will encourage the organisation of pre- and post- conference workshops as well as summer schools -especially when they are connected to these networks.
Making European Conferences accessible to young researchers (fees, accommodation and so forth) has always been a critical issue for the organizers, and this will continue. But we want also to contribute to the promotion of young researchers. Therefore, the steering committee has decided to create for 2003 a "young researcher award". This will be organized for the first time during the Milan business meeting. The procedure for the candidates is explained on Page 3 of this Newsletter( cf infra "Award for the best European doctoral thesis (dissertation)"
More generally, ESDP will maintain and develop its links with other international societies with which it shares scientific interests such as, for example, the European Society for the Study of Adolescence, ISSBD, SRCD and so forth.
The ESDP will encourage its members to make available to a large audience - and especially to those in charge of political issues in social and human matters – the base of knowledge gained by the sciences of human development and to help the latter to develop new frames of analysis and new intervention tools appropriate to the development of human communities, and especially of infants, children and adolescents.
The Newsletter and the Journal will provide support to disseminate the information on such initiatives.
The European Journal of Developmental Psychology is an official publication of the European Society for Developmental Psychology. It will be published by Psychology Press.
It will publish original theoretical, empirical, methodological and review papers dealing with psychological development during infancy, childhood and adolescence. It will also publish papers on social policy based on developmental science and which are relevant to education, health or well-being in childhood and adolescence.
It is keen to receive papers which are relevant to European developmental psychology in that they take account of topics such as European history, European policy or cultural diversity and their relevance to developmental matters.
The Journal aims to cover the areas of cognitive and social development and the development of the person (self, identity and personality) and to do so from a disciplinary and/or an interdisciplinary perspective.
In addition to full-length papers, the Journal will publish research notes and book reviews. On occasions, issues will be devoted to a special theme (under the editorship of an invited expert).
Any dissertation in the (broadly defined) domain of developmental psychology that has been successfully defended at a University in any European country during the period 1-1-2000 to 1-3-2003 is eligible to be included in the competition organized by ESDP.
Nominations of authors of the dissertations (the former Ph D students) as candidates for the award should be received by March 30, 2003. Self nominations are permitted. The applicants should send a paper based on the thesis in English, both in printed version and as file via email to each of the committee members. The paper should fulfil the APA criteria. The length of the paper should not exceed 25 pages (double spaced) excluding figures and tables. At the same time the applicants should send one copy of the original thesis (any European language is permitted) to each member of the committee.
All nominations should also be accompanied by 2 letters of recommendation by senior scholars.
A committee consisting of Claes von Hofsten (chair), Willem Koops, and Christiane Spiel will select the best thesis. The criteria will be good quality publications, well constructed studies, insightful analyses plus that little bit extra which makes the difference between the good and the best.
The awardee will receive $500. He/she will be offered the opportunity to present the research of the dissertation as an invited address at the next ESDP Conference in Milan August 2003, and will be invited and supported to publish an article based on the thesis in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.
The selection will be completed by the end of June.
Addresses of the committee members:
Prof. Claes von Hofsten Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, S-75142 Uppsala, Sweden, email: claes.von_hofsten@psyk.uu.se
Prof. Willem Koops, Utrecht University , Department of Developmental Psychology, Heidelberglaan 2, 3508 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: W.Koops@fss.uu.nl
Prof. Christiane Spiel, Department of Psychology, University of Vienna, Universitaetsstrasse 7, A-1010 Vienna, Austria. Email: Christiane.Spiel@univie.ac.at
The next (XIth) European Conference on Developmental Psychology, under the aegis of the European Society for Developmental Psychology, will be held in Italy at the Catholic University, Largo Gemelli, 1 Milano, from 27 to 31 August, 2003.
Scientific Programme
The conference will bring together developmentalists from European countries and from all over the world and will focus on the most relevant topics and issues within recent advances of Developmental Psychology, such as:
Conceiving childhood in European history and developmental psychology; Brain development in infants: from cortex to cognition; Individual differences in early childhood: the interplay of attachment and behavioral inhibition; Bullying at school: a cruel play in peer interactions; About agency: what non verbal children expect; Tolerance and intolerance among youth; Attachment, monotropy and multiple bonds; Infants and mothers under stress; Individual profiles in language development; Development, learning and everyday life: a virtuous triangle?; Families and the risk for psychopathological development: nailing down the processes and directions of effects; Effects foetal and neonatal exposure to stress on infant and child development; Effects of family intervention programs; Language and theory of mind; Multiple readings of Vygotskji.
December 1, 2002 Deadline for submission of abstracts
February 15, 2003 Notification of acceptance
April 30, 2003 Deadline for early registration
May 31, 2003 Deadline for hotel booking
| Until 30/04/03 | After 30/04/03 | |
|---|---|---|
| ESDP members | 270 € | 300 € |
| ESDP non members | 290 € | 340 € |
| Student ESDP members | 150 € | 170 € |
| Student ESDP non members | 170 € | 190 € |
| Accompanying person | 70 € | 90 € |
Scientific activities: C.R.T.I. - Department of Psychology
Catholic University of Milano, Largo Gemelli, 1 - 20123 - Milano, Italy
Phone: +39 02 7234 2332, +39 02 7234 2685 Fax: +39 02 7234 2934
E-mail: ecdp@mi.unicatt.it
Method of payment, confirmation or cancellation of registration, hotel reservation, social program, accomodation: ICO - Italian Congress Organizer
Via Lorenzo Marcello, 32 - 30126 – Lido di Venezia, Italy.
Phone: +39 041 5906 911; Fax: +39 041 4566 818
E-mail: conference@ecdpmilan2003.it or icointernational@inwind.it
Web site: http://www.promoitaliaonline.net/XIECDP/
The local organiser is Dr. María José Rodrigo, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of La Laguna, and member of the Executive Committee of the ESDP. The Conference Venue will be in the Aularium of the Faculty of Psychology placed in the Campus of Guajara, near La Laguna.
La Laguna is an old town, recently declared Cultural Patrimony by the UNESCO. La Laguna is easily reached by plane: it is 15 minutes away from the International Airport of Tenerife-North, and 1 hour by bus away from the International Airport of Tenerife-South. A range of differently priced hotels is available in Puerto de la Cruz, La Laguna and Santa Cruz, the capital of the Island. Trips to visit other places in the Canary Islands are also available. For further information do not hesitate to contact us:
María José Rodrigo, Faculty of Psychology, University of la Laguna, Campus of Guajara, La Laguna, 38200, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
Mail: mjrodri@ull.es
In search of ways to explain development: from classical to new proposals
The Developmental Psychology Section of the Polish Psychology Association (head: Prof. Maria Kielar-Turska) is organizing the 12th Conference on Developmental Psychology. The conference will take place at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, June 5-8, 2003. The Chairperson of the Conference is Pr Barbara Szmigielska-Siuta.
The time of the conference coincides with two anniversaries in the Psychology Department at the University: the 100th anniversary of establishing the Psychological Section by WLadysLaw Heinrich (1903) and the 75th anniversary of opening the Department of Pedagogical Psychology by Stefan Szuman (1928).
Focusing on the early and contemporary explanations of developmental phenomena, the theme of the conference is In search of ways to explain development: from classical to new proposals.
Applications should be sent by 28 February 2003 on the following address:
Sekcja Psychologii Rozwojowej Polskiego Towarzystwa Psychologicznego
>Instytut Psychologii, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski
Al. Mickiewicza 3; 31-120 Kraków
Tel. +48126341305 ext.240,241; fax: +48126237699; e-mail: sekcja@apple.phils.uj.edu.pl
Applicants will be sent registration forms and additional information. Conference fee (materials, visiting the museum of the JU, theatre, reception and banquet) is 400 PLN.
The 29th meeting of the Association for Moral Education (AME) will take place in Krakow, Poland from July 17 to 20, 2003. This conference is being co-sponsored by the Jagellonian University and the Polish Psychological Association.
Conference and Program Chair: Pr. Adam Niemczinsky.
Submissions should be sent as an open text (not an attachment) to the Program Chair.
Deadline for proposals: February 10, 2003.
More information about the programme and guidelines for proposals: upniemcz@if.uj.edu.pl
More information about the AME: www.amenetwork.org
Speakers will be Main, Sroufe, Waters, Bretherton, Belsky, Stevenson-Hinde, Sagi, Steele, Grossmann
REGENSBURG, July 11 - 13, 2003 FOR DETEILS AND REGISTRATION SEE: http://www-futur.uni-regensburg.de/atica2003
Contact Klaus.Grossmann@psychologie.uni-regensburg.de
Charles Crook
Loughborough University, UK
There is a lively culture of research among British developmental and educational psychologists that concerns young peoples engagement with new media – in particular interactive media such as personal computers and mobile telephones. While there has always been a strong tradition of interest concerning computers and education, the work outlined in this article is more oriented to recreational or out-of-school experiences. Perhaps one blindspot in modern developmental psychology is an attitude that sees only the child as "developing" – failing to notice that the world is undergoing change also. One is reminded of Bronfenbrenner’s remark to the effect that studying development was like studying action on a moving train: the context will not stay helpfully still! In this article I shall draw attention to some current research that notices the changes brought about in children’s social worlds by new technology. The review is inevitably selective but it is also inevitably short: however, internet links are provided at the end of the text (in the order mentioned in the body of the piece) for the benefit of readers who wish to follow up any theme covered.
One recent strand of research interest has simply concerned how young people use new technology at home. The social psychologist Sonia Livingstone has been doing interview and in-home observations around this topic for several years. That work has recently been summarised in a number of publications that draw attention to the "ecology of domestic interactive technologies" (details on website). Forthcoming is an edited volume "Children and their changing media environment" that gives a cross-European perspective on the psychological issues.
Other groups have also furnished empirical data relating to the way in which computing technology is used at home and, in particular, how it links with the agendas of schooling. A group at Bristol University Graduate School of Education (the ScreenPlay project) have published a number of papers arising from a large survey of 12-16 year olds and a smaller scale ethnography of home use. Similar work has been reported by Cindy Kerawalla at Loughborough University. The common message appears to be that while there is parental, educational and political enthusiasm for using new technology as a channel for linking home recreation to school curriculum, the reality is that schooled interests are maintained by a more complicated infrastructure and that owning personal computers is not – in itself – enough to open that channel up.
More focussed topics relating to children’s home computer use have concerned talking books and electronic toys. Clare Wood (Open University) and Pav Chera (Middlesex University) write the following about their own project: "Animated 'talking' books are regarded as an increasingly popular form of educational software by both parents and teachers but little systematic research has been conducted into whether they improve young children's attainment in reading development or the skills related to it. Pav Chera devised a talking book version of the 'Bangers and Mash' reading scheme which capitalised on the phonic regularity of the stories, by offering children the opportunity to see the words broken down through the use of animation and digitised speech. In addition the children could access 'activity pages' to see how some of the words in the story with similar endings were constructed from an onset and a rime (e.g. 'b-ig'). An initial study found that limited contact with such books improved the children's phonological awareness, but that this increase in skill did not promote a similar increase in the children's reading ability. As a consequence ongoing research is looking at the factors that may contribute to successful use of the software, including the initial ability of the children, individual differences in how they interact with the computer, and social factors. Another area of ongoing interest is concerned with whether such software has the potential to foster effective collaboration in young children."
However, computing technology at the play/education interface is not confined to just electronic versions of books. Collaborating at the School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, the University of Sussex, and the Institute of Education at the University of Stirling a number of developmental psychologists are working on an exploratory study to investigate and map the interaction between children and electronic toys.
Psychologists at the Institute of Education, London University have had a longstanding interest in the ways in which computing technology can be mobilised into educational practice to respect constructivist principles – especially in relation to mathematics education. The "Playground Project" is a current (European-wide) initiative that is less closely tied to school but still very much about empowering children to act upon computers and make them instruments of playful creativity. Richard Noss and Celia Hoyles write of their project as follows
"The Playground Project" involves a group of researchers based in several European countries collaborating to develop a system with which young children, aged less than 8 years old, can play, share, construct and rebuild computer games. Our goal is to put children in the role of game designers and game producers, rather than merely consumers of games produced and designed by adults.
We have chosen the domain of computer games for two main reasons: The first is cultural, the second mathematical. From a cultural point of view, videogames and their associated cultural artefacts (such as animated film, and interactive video) are the most pervasive feature of children’s culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Like them or loathe them, they speak to millions of children and represent a vehicle for huge waves of popular culture (at the time of writing, the Pokémon craze has come and gone; another is surely on its way).
Tapping into children’s culture is a necessary (but certainly not sufficient) element of trying to develop the kind of meta-epistemological stance we require. The challenge is considerable, for one effect of the digital revolution is precisely that few things invite inspection: one cannot know how a digital watch works by opening it, what makes the washing machine start and stop, how a speedometer works – all these mechanisms, which once may have offered at least some children a chance to investigate how things work, are closed; no user serviceable parts, no learnable mechanisms.
The second reason for our choice of video games is that they represent an arena for exploration of interesting mathematical and scientific phenomena. Videogames represent a closed formal system of rules. When this touches that, make this happen. If the speed is greater than x, set y to something. Whenever the joystick button is pressed, make this object change colour. Games in general represent most children’s first brush with what it means to operate within a formal system (if you pass go, collect 200 pounds); videogames are a mathematical instantiation of a formal system. We aim to go one step further, in affording children an opportunity to explore the world of formal systems, build and rebuild them for themselves, in accessing and bringing to life the mathematical instantiation hidden beneath a typical videogame.
In formally expressing what she wants to happen, a child can – we hope – become engaged in expressing mathematically interesting phenomena. Until now, this expression has meant interacting with strings of text in the form of computer programming languages. Without doubt, this has provided a considerable opportunity for exploration of and with quasi-algebraic systems; children’s engagement with Logo has been well-documented and there is a substantial corpus of encouraging work in this respect.
The problem is that many of the children with whom we were working could not read or write with any sophistication. So we based our design and implementation of a system on a new programming system, called ToonTalk, a Turing equivalent programming language whose source code is animated9. What this means is that the language is a real language – not just a simplified toy with strict upper limits of what can be expressed. And it means that the source code actually is what you see on the screen: animated robots who are "trained" to do tasks (programmed); arithmetic operations are performed by a mouse (an animated cartoon mouse, not the thing we hold in our hands!); even cutting and pasting is done by cartoon characters such as an animated vacuum cleaner.
A recurrent theme at the intersection of young people and computer is the issue of gender. There is a strong popular understanding that the technology is gendered in terms of the readiness shown by boys and girls to make use of it. For some time Karen Littleton at the Open University (in collaboration with Paul Light and Annerieke Oosterwegel at Bournemouth and Southampton Universities respectively) have been examining this issue. Karen writes of this work as follows: "Gender differences in response to computers have been widely reported. Some of our recent work has addressed the question of how far the context in which a computer task is presented can affect girls' and boys' on-task performance. In an experimental study involving 60 ten and eleven year-olds, we examined the effects of differential contextualisation on girls' and boys' performance on a computer-based perceptual-motor skills task. Our findings illustrated that even with a single, standard piece of software, children's performance could be substantially affected by the context in which that software was presented. Where the task was introduced as a test there was no trace of a performance difference between girls and the boys. By contrast, when exactly the same task was introduced as a game, the boys' and girls' performance diverged to a point where there was a significant gender difference in performance favouring the boys. Moreover, the girls performed significantly better when the task was described as a test than when it was described as a game. The results suggest that gender differences in children's responses to computer tasks are relatively labile, and highly context sensitive."
Some of this interest has precipitated out into centres of research, supporting a wider range of projects on children, media, technology and education. One such centre is based in London, namely "The Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. The group aims to provide a focus for existing work and for developing new projects in this field. It is based at the Institute of Education, University of London. A longstanding group with special interest in educational practice is the "CREDIT" research group directed by David Wood at Nottingham.
Projects at Nottingham include the following. (1) The Development Of Skills In Collaboration & Peer Tutoring: The aims of this study are to develop a profile of skills underlying peer tutoring abilities in young children. Investigation focuses on the relations between peer tutoring ability and theory of mind, planning, comprehension of narratives and referential communication. (2) The Development of Contingent Tutoring Systems: This project aims to implement and test computer-based tutors which will respond contingently to learners' success and help-seeking. (3) Promoting Learning in Children with Difficulties: This research examines the effects of a long-term intervention study designed to promote language and communication skills in children with moderate learning difficulties.
Finally, the UK government has recently set up a Ł200 million initiative to realise potential "To support and promote talent, innovation and creativity in the fields of science, technology and the arts". (Partly funded by the National Lottery.) A significant theme concerns new technology and within that theme there is a special interest in children’s engagement with computers and other interactive media. The Centre is based in Bristol and brings together researchers, practitioners and media experts.
Summary
Children and new electronic media is a lively research area with UK academic live. Not all of this implicates developmental psychologists by strict definition – perhaps it should more. But there is a significant visibility for developmental psychological ideas. Hopefully it exemplifies a wider interest in defining a developmental psychology that takes seriously issues of culture and culture change
Sonia Livingstone’s recent work on young people and new media
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/Media/people/slivingstone/projects.html
Livingstone’s edited "European" review http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/Media/people/slivingstone/LEA_book_advert.pdf
The ScreenPlay Project at Bristol
http://squat.com/twopointthree/screen/new/
Kerawalla’s research at Loughborough
http://devpsy.lboro.ac.uk/psy/ckc/papers/cindyD3.htm
Electronic toys project
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/rosel/LuckinCachetIntro.htm
Institute of Education (London) Playground Project
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/playground
Center for the Study of Children, Youth and Media
http://www.ccsonline.org.uk/mediacentre/main.html
CREDIT, Nottingham University
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/research/credit/
NESTA
http://www.nesta.org.uk/lowfat/background.htm
Mobility within the 6th framework programme
Several calls were published on December 27, 2002 under the heading of "human resources and mobility".
It is important that members of the ESDP use this information in order to build scientific networks and promote the developmental approach in Psychology and, more broadly, within the european human community.
Here are some addresses to get more informations
Networks on training and research
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=23
Young researchers grants
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=25
Conference and training programmes
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=27
Grants for knowledge transfer
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=26
Scolarships for international exchanges
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=28
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=29
http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=30
Marie Curie Chairs
