Dear ISSBD Colleagues and Friends,
It is certainly a privilege to be your 13th ISSBD President.
Our mission is to promote international scientific research in
human development throughout the lifespan. We are now celebrating
our 50th anniversary. In this issue you will find thoughts
and reflections from our Society’s past presidents. They highlight
important issues, challenges, and accomplishments of
ISSBD during their presidencies.
Now, we face the future. What will it hold for us?
Well, of course, I don’t know. But there is one thing about
which I am absolutely certain: It will not be easy. While we are
making important scientific advances and discoveries, we are
also living in a time of significant challenges.
On the scientific level, I am excited about our expanded
understanding of underlying developmental processes, about
our increased recognition of the importance of context, and
about the availability of new tools, measures, and methodologies.
We regularly use multiple techniques for data gathering
data, by observation, interviews, focus groups, surveys, genetics,
biomarkers, sensors, eye tracking and other data gathering
devices including monitors, personal assistant devices, and
social media. We also now have access to quite clever, advanced
analytic strategies. These include multi-level modeling, computer
programs to analyze qualitative interviews, latent class
analyses and actor-partner interdependence models, to name
just a few. We are breaking new ground linking brain functioning
to development. Fields such as cultural and social neuroscience
make clear the extent to which the phenomenon of
development is multi-level, requiring interdisciplinary partnerships
and teams to achieve an entirely new level of understanding
concerning any phenomenon of interest.
On the human level, I am encouraged by the increased
recognition of the need for and benefits of interdisciplinary
science. For example, although we have long recognized the
importance of context, we seem to be taking this to a new
level, which requires experts in different fields to address the
same issue and provide input that contributes to our total
understanding of the issue at hand. A simple example is illustrative:
to maximize the health of the child, adolescent, and
adult, we recognize the importance of the individual level,
e.g. availability of food and shelter. While we have long
recognized the importance of family context, we increasingly
see that families are changing and can be supportive or threatening
in multiple ways; the same is true for the schools children
attend or the work and community within which adults
live. Further, we now recognize the possible impact of micro
level factors such as genetics and biology or macro factors
such as economics, climate change, war and conflict. We can’t
all be experts in all of these areas, hence the need for interdisciplinary
teams.
On a societal level, we are facing numerous global challenges.
While the past may have seen behavioral development
as a phenomenon to be studied in the laboratory, we are increasingly
aware that our science is relevant for and should be
applied to the problems we face at both the individual and global
level. Many of us now think in terms of how our findings can
and should be communicated to policy makers so that they can
apply scientific evidence to the most pressing challenges we face
internationally. This view is grounded in our increased awareness
that human development is dynamic, not fixed at birth or
by geography. It can be influenced in both positive and negative
ways and influence can happen across the lifespan and intergenerationaly;
and is bi-directional. Hence, as developmental
scientists we have an obligation to communicate what we learn
through our work.
I am proud that we, as a society, increasingly recognize the
moral and practical benefits of science. We are learning to use
modern technology in unique ways that allow us to profit from
our scientific discoveries. At the same time, I believe we are
increasingly adapting global goals that focus on health, wellbeing
and productivity for all. We recognize that societal progress
need not be sacrificed to financial profit, and that we learn
from each other when we work in interdisciplinary and/or international
teams. ISSBD is committed to working interdisciplinarily,
to educating and socializing young and emerging scholars
and to contributing to finding solutions to the global challenges
we face. While one size often does not fit all in the application of
science; the goal of optimizing development through scientific
principles is global and will benefit all.
With much hope for our future and wishing us all a happy
50th anniversary,
Toni C. Antonucci