THE PLACE OF LEARNING WITHIN THE HUMAN-DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM - A DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE

Within developmental contextualism, the basic process of human development involves changing relations between the developing person and his or her changing, multilevel context. Accordingly, the functions associated with any one level of organization are quite distinct from the process of development. Learning is a case in point. Learning is a function of the person and has its locus at the individual-psychological level of organization. Both more molecular and more molar levels of organization have their own focal functions and, as with learning, these functions play necessary but, by themselves, insufficient roles in texturing the changing developmental system. Learning is no more or no less important than any other focal function at any level of organization. If learning has an influence on other levels, it does so only through being past of an integrated system of multilevel relations.