Critical Pedagogies and Inclusive Evidence in Developmental Science: Locating Our 'Come from Place'

Developmental science as a field is itself at a formative period of development, reconciling its history with dominant perspectives that often represented narrow samples or phenomena, and pushes toward more pluralistic, critically engaged approaches that reflect the realities of diverse communities. This roundtable symposium explores how our “come from place”—including our social identities, family roles, culture, institutional positions, and community connections—shapes the ways we teach, research, and apply developmental science. By centering our positionalities, we model an approach to developmental science that is inclusive, transformative, and responsive to the complexities of human development across varied and multilayered contexts.

Through dialogue with one another and with the audience, the panelists—Drs. Mona Abo-Zena, Nicholas Hartlep, Matthew Kim, and Meenal Rana will identify challenges and possibilities for teaching developmental science critically and for expanding the field’s boundaries. A central focus will be strategies to broaden the evidence base by incorporating marginalized voices and global perspectives, while also examining how power, culture, and institutions define what counts as “valid” knowledge.

Organized by Drs. Meenal Rana and Deborah Johnson

Faciliated by Dr. Yoko Yamamoto

This roundtable symposium aligns with the conference theme by offering a generative space for scholars to strategize around sustaining research productivity and voice amidst the growing challenges faced by Diversity Science scholars. It emphasizes cross-group coalition-building, research continuity, and mutual empowerment—all central high quality science forto the public good science. 

In an era of escalating challenges to equity-driven research, our strongest asset is one another and our common interestseach other. This roundtable convenes leading scholars to collaboratively strategize how the Diversity Science Initiative (DSI) and its broader interdisciplinary networks can sustain research productivity, coalition-building, and public impact. Together with audience participants, we will reflect on what it means to “circle the wagons” around shared values and scientific commitments, and to protect the spaces where our voices matter most. This session seeks to reclaim a collective sense of empowerment and recommitment to the public good through sustained collaboration, innovation, and advocacy. 

Poster Session and Reception with Cash Bar 

This presentation engages with and extends a biocultural, embodied framework of human development, emphasizing the dynamic coupling between individuals and their developmental niches. Drawing on insights from developmental biology and the extended evolutionary synthesis, development is reframed as active engagement within a space of possibility shaped by the entangled dynamics of biological processes, cultural practices, and structural conditions, and carried forward across generations. A study of infant motor development illustrates how developmental pathways reflect active exploration within nested constraints. Rather than treating variation as deviation from a norm, this perspective views it as revealing the constraint dynamics through which biology and culture become fundamentally integrated. The presentation concludes by considering how this framework can inform research, education, and applied work aimed at understanding and supporting the developmental conditions through which human potential takes shape.

Poster Session and Reception with Cash Bar