In a quiet Kenyan village, a child draws a circle and a diamond for the first time.
Thousands of miles away in a polished classroom in New England, another child does the same. The shapes may not be perfect. The pressure of the pencil, the meaning of the task, even the value assigned to the moment—all may differ. But one truth unites these two children: they are both becoming.
This is where developmental psychology begins—not with charts or theories, but with the shared mystery of how human beings grow. And if developmental psychology is to fulfill its promise, as Charles M. Super reminds us, it must become a science of the whole world.
One Field, Many Roots
The idea of childhood as a unique stage of life is not universal. It is, historically, a Western construction—refined through European philosophy, shaped by postwar institutions, and measured by tools often designed for middle-class American schools.
From its formal beginning in Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig in 1875 to the empirical expansions of the 20th century, developmental psychology grew as a product of its time. Anchored in the ideals of scientific rigor, it mirrored the dominant values of the societies that produced it—individualism, linear progress, standardized education.
But what of the rest of the world?
What of children growing up in farming communities in Kenya, in bustling cities in India, in refugee camps or tribal villages, where development is not charted by test scores but by storytelling, sibling care, or ritual?
Super’s powerful narrative in The Globalization of Developmental Psychology challenges us to reimagine our assumptions. Not to discard science, but to expand it. Not to erase theories, but to enrich them with the texture of cultural meaning.
More Than Western Children
For too long, developmental psychology has told a partial story—a story shaped by children who are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). These children form the baseline for “normal” development, while the rest of the world’s children are framed as deviations or outliers.
But Super’s cross-cultural research reveals something different: that beneath cultural variation lies a shared sequence of mental transformation. The so-called “five-to-seven shift”—the period when children begin to show more abstract thinking, self-awareness, and cognitive flexibility—occurs across settings. It happens in New England as it does in Kokwet.
However, how those capacities are expressed, valued, and shaped depends entirely on cultural context. A child may learn to wield a pencil or herd goats. One may memorize a math fact, another a family lineage. Both are developing—but on different terms.
Culture Is Not Noise—It’s the Signal
One of Super’s key contributions is to reframe culture not as interference in the data, but as data itself. Culture organizes the environment in which children grow. It teaches them how to think, what to notice, whom to trust, and what matters.
If we ignore culture, we risk misinterpreting development itself. We mistake silence for delay, or group learning for dependency. We measure memory but miss meaning. We ask “how many words?” when the real question is “what do those words do?”
To globalize developmental psychology is to realize that science must listen before it speaks. It must observe before it diagnoses. It must learn to ask: What does growth look like here? What does success mean in this community? Who is considered wise, capable, whole?
From Colonial Eyes to Collaborative Inquiry
Globalizing a discipline is not a neutral act. Historically, psychology—and science more broadly—has often played the role of the outsider: coming in, measuring, explaining, and departing. This legacy mirrors patterns of colonialism: the belief that knowledge flows in one direction—from the West outward.
But the future of developmental psychology depends on reciprocity. Super notes that today, many scholars trained in the West have returned to their home countries, building local research communities. Journals are increasingly publishing work from around the world. And while U.S.-based data still dominates, the center of gravity is beginning to shift.
The goal is not to create a “global average child,” but to build a field spacious enough for all children. A field that sees difference not as deviation, but as design.
Toward a Human Science
In the end, the globalization of developmental psychology is not just a methodological challenge—it is a moral one. It asks us: Whose children count? Whose knowledge matters? Whose voices are heard in the making of science?
To globalize this field is to make it more human.
It is to walk with the child in Duxbury and the child in Kokwet. To learn their games. To hear their dreams. To see the sacredness in how they grow, and to let their stories change what we think we know.
Because development is not a Western idea. It is a human journey. And only when we see the world in its fullness can we begin to understand what it means to grow.