On January 22, 2007, the American Library Association awarded The Newbery Medal (the most prestigious book award for children’s literature) to Susan Patron for her book “The Higher Power of Lucky.”  The book is about a ten year old girl named Lucky living in a tiny town in the California desert who fears being abandoned...Read More

I’ve written a book for educators called The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice (publisher:  The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, December, 2006).  In this book I suggest that our educational climate has become totally overwhelmed by what I call an “academic achievement discourse.”  This discourse concentrates on accountability, rubrics,...Read More

Swiss philosopher Jean Piaget conceived of four cognitive stages of human development.  They are as follows: Birth to Age Two – The Sensori-Motor Stage:   infants develop their thinking processes solely through the body; in the course of moving their arms, legs, and torsos around, infants make things happen accidentally, and want to make them happen...Read More

The early twentieth century philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner conceived of a theory of human development based upon seven year cycles, and linked those cycles to astrology.  The first seven years of life (0-7 years old) were associated with the Moon. During this time, the psychic forces are working to transform the body of the...Read More

 A recent book by developmental psychologist David Elkind is entitled The Power of Play, and I would recommend it to parents, educators, psychotherapists, and anyone else who has an interest in play and children.  David Elkind was a disciple of Jean Piaget, the great French structuralist thinker who changed people’s conceptions of how children think.  In this...Read More