Kathleen McCartney - Experience and Development: A Festschrift in Honor of Sandra Wood Scarr

This series celebrates the careers and contributions of a generation of pioneers in psychological science. Based on the proceedings of daylong festschrift events at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, each volume commemorates the research and life of an exceptionally influential scientist. These books document the professional and personal milestones that have shaped the frontiers of progress across a variety of areas, from theoretical discoveries to innovative applications and from experimental psychology to clinical research. The unifying element among the individuals and books in this series is a commitment to science as the key to understanding and improving the human condition.

Psychological Clinical Science: Papers in Honor of Richard M. McFall , edited by Teresa A. Treat, Richard R. Bootzin, and Timothy B. Baker (2007).

Rationality and Social Responsibility: Essays in Honor of Robyn Mason Dawes , edited by Joachim I. Krueger (2008).

Experience and Development: A Festschrift in Honor of Sandra Wood Scarr , edited by Kathleen McCartney and Richard A. Weinberg (2009).

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Experience and development : a festschrift in honor of Sandra Wood Scarr /

edited by Kathleen McCartney, Richard A. Weinberg.
p. cm. -- (Modern pioneers in psychological science: APS-PP)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84872-847-9 (hbk. : alk. paper)

1. Developmental psychology. 2. Child development. 3. Scarr, Sandra. I.

McCartney, Kathleen. II. Weinberg, Richard A. III. Scarr, Sandra.

BF713.E96 2009

155--dc22

2009014436

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Few scholars change their field as fearlessly and as profoundly as Sandra Wood Scarr. It is important to place her work in the context of the times. When Sandra came of age as a social scientist, men dominated the fieldeven this field, which is after all about children. Sandra writes about her struggle for a tenured position in the Epilogue. So much has happened so soon for women scholars, in large part because women like Sandra were courageous enough to redefine a way of working and mothering. She did all this with little support from the academy or from society; in fact, she did all this despite roadblocks from all quarters, including family and friends.

It is also important to place Sandras work in the context of the field. When Sandra came of age as a scientist, socialization theory was the predominant paradigm. She worked tirelessly to prove that the best way to understand experience and development is through behavior genetics designs and experimental interventions. Not surprisingly, her critics were scathingafter all, she was telling them they had no clothes. Her argument was compelling, as always; the confounding of genes and environments is now an accepted tenet of developmental doctrine. Nevertheless, examples of nave environmentalism abound, and the nostalgia for proximal variables irks her still. Sandra should take comfort from the fact that many heeded her words, including the authors of these chapters. And so we conducted twin and adoption studies, we modeled gene-environment interplay, we examined the effects of early childhood programs, and we offered strong inferences, as Sandra did throughout her brilliant career.

Where did she find her inner strength to follow her best instincts about development? If we were to ask her, she might joke mostly nature and a bit of nurture. These lines from Alfred Lord Tennysons Ulysses help us understand how those who shift paradigms think about their journey.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro

Gleams that untravelld world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

And move she did.

This volume reflects the help and support of many admirers of Sandra Wood Scarr. We are especially indebted to Alan Kraut, executive director of the Association of Psychological Science, who worked alongside us to organize the Festschrift for Sandra Scarr at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Washington, DC, on May 26 and 27, 2007. Given Sandras role as a founding member of APS and as its seventh president from 19961997, it was fitting to celebrate Sandras work at this conference. We are also grateful to Kate Volpe of APS for her help with planning the event and to Laurie Forcier of the Harvard Graduate School of Education for her able assistance with the preparation of this book.

Financial assistance for the event was provided by APS, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis publishers, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Behavior Genetics Association, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, the Department of Psychology at Yale University, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. Sandra transformed these organizations through the leadership roles she played in each, and they are better for it.

We are especially grateful to our coauthors for their contributions to this volume. Some are former students and colleagues; all are admirers of a scholar who changed the way we think about experience and development. We suspect they feel, as we do, that their thinking has been advanced by reading Sandras work, by sparring with her over ideas, and by having earned her friendship.