Herbert Zimiles

Adolescent Family Structure and Educational Progress.

The secondary analysis of a subsample of high school sophomores from a national data set compared students from intact, single-parent, and remarried families with respect to academic achievement, high school grades, and educational persistence.

On Reassessing the Relevance of the Child Development Knowledge Base to Education

This essay examines the ramifications of some new lines of thought that challenge prevailing ideas about the applicability of child development knowledge to early childhood education. Although the connection between child development (along with its home scientific base of psychology) and education is in many ways becoming ever stronger, there are at the same time strong sentiments of skepticism, disillusionment, and in some cases outright rejection, directed at this well established alliance [Bloch, 1992; Goffin, 1996; Lubeck, 1996; Katz, 1996; Stott & Bowman, 1996]. It is ironic to find the psychological base of educational practice disputed so near the close of a century that might well be termed the era of enlightenment with respect to the role of the dimension of the psychological. It has been a time when the intangible realm of psychology was finally subjected to explicit and systematic study and when the psychological level of analysis has become a salient feature of how we think about the world and of our experience in it. To many observers, the main educational advances of this century revolve around the realization that the key to effective and productive education lies in learning about child development, learning how to create a school

The Adoration of "Hard Data": A Case Study of Data Fetishism in the Evaluation of Infant Day Care.

Using a recent journal issue devoted to the evaluation of infant day care as a point of departure, this article examines the manner in which the data-driven character of child development research limits the validity and penetration of the search for new knowledge and understanding, and imposes a skewed image of what is known about children and childhood by excluding the less objective observations and insights of the clinician/practitioner.

Viewing education through a psychological lens: the contributions of Barbara Biber.

The legacy of Barbara Biber is described in terms of the depth and explanatory power of her knowledge of child development, and the manner in which this knowledge was used to transform our ways of thinking about the psychological ramifications of schooling.

Schismatic Studies of Divorce

That it is important to learn about the psychological impact of divorce on children and families is hardly disputable when one considers the profundity of the emotional loss that is entailed and its ubiquitous nature. A pair of recently published books – The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by J.S. Wallerstein, J.M. Lewis & S. Blakeslee and For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered by E.M. Hetherington & J. Kelly, may well be the culminating reports by two of the leading longitudinal investigators of the effects of divorce. Although this field has attracted a veritable army of researchers, the work of each of the principal authors of these books stands out. Their methods of study are strikingly different and so are the conclusions each chooses to emphasize. In fact, it may be speculated that Hetherington’s book was spurred at least in part by the need to challenge Wallerstein’s examination and portrayal of the consequences of divorce. Not surprisingly, then, this essay is about schisms: about family ruptures and about differences in how to investigate their impact and think about their psychological ramifications. Whereas Wallerstein’s book focuses on the findings of her 25-year follow-up, Hetherington in her book uses the results of her long-term follow-up as a point of departure for a newly expressed concern – that of guiding parents (mostly mothers) who are contemplating divorce. This essay makes extensive reference to the methods and findings of Hetherington’s longitudinal investigation that gave rise to her