Chapter 1 - Science Does Not Speak for Itself

Summary

This introductory chapter previews the major themes of the book. The chapter discusses how brain development has become incorporated into parents’ thinking about early child development, educators’ concerns with early childhood education, legislators’ initiatives supporting young children and their families, businesses’ marketing of commercial products for young children, and other features of the climate of early child development for the past twenty years. It discusses how ideas from philosophy and later psychological science have historically created images and metaphors to convey new understanding of the developing child, and how brain development has become the most recent and influential of these scientific accounts because of its novelty, its technological sophistication, and a concerted public engagement campaign in 1997 to promote public understanding of the developing brain. The view that “science does not speak for itself” highlights that scientists are trusted sources but not trusted communicators. This raises the problem of how best to convey this scientific account to an interested public, and alternative ways of translating developmental research findings into “usable knowledge” for parents and practitioners are considered. The chapter concludes with an outline of the chapters and the issues they discuss.