Do you want to work with health and comfort issues for a given population? Are you interested in work conditions and retirement issues? Do you want to work on improving traffic safety? Do you want to understand the mind of a terrorist? Are you interested in the promotion of disadvantaged children's learning conditions? Do you wonder what psychotherapy is good for?
What is Human development - Ontogenesis and Microgenesis?
Take these issues, or virtually any other issue involving human functioning, for all of them, you will have to take into consideration that humans are different and, what is more, one and the same individual will function differently in different environmental contexts and in different epochs of his or her life.
The Human Development programme offers a curriculum aimed at an understanding of the complexity of human functioning, recognizing the importance of individual differences, as well as the importance of changes within the individual, between individuals and in groups. This means that the curriculum has the ambition to integrate all aspects of human change processes throughout the life span, both on a microgenetic and on an ontogenetic level. Therefore, the curriculum will not be restricted to psychological issues, but will also cover biological and health aspects, human movement aspects, social and cultural aspects, economic aspects, and physical environmental aspects.
A human being goes through many changes during a lifetime. Some of these changes are passing quickly, others are lasting. We consider lasting changes to constitute development. They can be changes related only to a particular aspect of human functioning, such as the acquisition of a skill, learning to drive a car, for example. In that case we talk about microgenesis. Or they may involve the whole individual, for example, the transition from being a teenager into adulthood. In that case we talk about ontogenesis.Ontogenesis and microgenesis are mutually dependent on each other. You may not be able — or allowed — to drive a car until you have reached a certain age (ontogenesis), and having learned to drive a car may change your life.
Developmental psychology used to be restricted to certain aspects of child, adolescent, and — possibly — old age changes (e.g., emotion, cognition, or social relations). However, these aspects were typically dealt with without being related to each other. Furthermore, little was said about what happens when these changes are taking place. Only the outcomes of change processes were dealt with.
Why Human Development?
To our knowledge this programme is the first attempt to provide an integrated view of human development, including biological, physiological and neurological aspects on development, as well as interpersonal, social and cultural aspects.
The specializations should strive for an integration of different (notably both biological and social) aspects of human change processes. Example topics for Master’s thesis include:
Physical fitness and social relations in secondary school
Skill development in pre-school age and the cultural impact of adult expectations
Brain development and mother-infant interaction with premature babies in different cultures
The understanding of biological bases for personality disorder in different cultures
