Editorial: Where to Raise Happy and Skilled Children: How Environment Shapes Human Development and Education

Abstract

Child development consists of a series of changes that occur in the individual, driven by genetic, biological, social, cultural, and environmental resources and constraints (Bronfenbrenner, [2]; Hendry and Kloep, [13]). Child development has been described and explained through different perspectives, focusing on the changes in different components (e.g., cognition, emotion, relations, language, etc.) implying different developmental processes (e.g., continuous vs. discontinuous, quantitative vs. qualitative, maturational vs. social processes) and using different scientific methodologies (e.g., lab experiments, field observations, cross-sectional vs. longitudinal research designs). This long research tradition has helped uncover the many ways in which a newborn grows into an adult, offering important insights into interventions, education, and social policies. Following a basic assumption of environmental psychology, human beings, as all forms of living organisms, are shaped by the physical and social characteristics of their life's environments, impacting on the development of their skills, preferences, habits, and behaviors (Bonnes and Carrus, [1]; Mercado-Doménech et al., [20]). On the other hand, individuals and social groups leave a footprint on their habitats. The environment is, in some measure, an outcome of human actions (Gifford, [9]). According to the ecological approach to human development (Bronfenbrenner, [2]), child development occurs in a series of hierarchically organized environmental systems, characterized by specific properties, components, and rules and linked by reciprocal and dynamic relations, and interactions. The social-relational aspects of development and the impact of specific activities for learning and acquisition represent the main research stream in this framework (e.g., Bruner, [3]; Tomasello et al., [24]; Pontecorvo and Pirchio, [23]). Recently, however, psychologists have shifted their attention toward investigating the relationships among the physical properties of the environment and child development and behavior (Legendre, [17]; Evans, [8]; Carrus et al., [4]).