Human Growth and Development Essay

According to Beckett (2002), there are many viewpoints to look at human growth and development. Beckett believes that there are three aspects to growth and development. These are biological, psychological and sociological. The biological viewpoint is when development is looked at through physical changes in the body, for example, height, weight and intelligence. The psychological perspective of development is about how the way in which people think develops through interaction and the sociological perspective of development is the way in which society influences the way humans think. The viewpoint that Beckett emphasis is mainly psychological as he believes humans grow and develop through interaction with the people around them (Beckett 2002).  
Keenan (2002) believes that development is “patterns of change over time which begin at conception and continue throughout the lifespan”(Keenan 2002:2).   These two viewpoints show the different beliefs of both authors, as Keenan believes that development happens in patterns, that continue throughout life, whereas Beckett believes that development can be influenced by society or through interaction with humans and therefore not necessarily as a pattern.
These contradictory ideas show that there is no definitive definition of development and everyone has different ideas of what development means. Throughout this essay, there will be more conflicting ideas of child development between different theorists and Early Years Pioneers on how language development can affect all areas of development. It will also show how language development can interlink with other areas of development.
Language development is the source of all social communication. According to Thomson and Meggitt (1997), the sequence of language development is always the same, however the rate at which children develop differs for each individual child. There are four elements of language. These are listening and understanding, talking, reading and writing...