Teaching—Learning Features of the Sixth Edition

You will enjoy and learn from this book to the extent that its topics, organization, and clarity make its contents meaningful to you. Helping you to master the book's contents in as uncomplicated a manner as possible has been the most important pedagogical goal of our work. To accomplish this task, we have built into each chapter a number of features, described here. The Student Owner's Manual that follows this preface also walks you through these features by pairing examples of features with explanations of their use.

• Chapter Outlines. The major topics of each chapter are presented initially so that you may quickly find the subject you need. An outline helps you to retain material (a memory aid) and is an efficient method for reviewing content.
• Opening Quotation. Each chapter opens with a quotation that sets the tone for what follows.
• Opening Vignette. Each chapter opens with a vignette that illustrates the chapter's content. These vignettes are intended to demonstrate how the topics described in the chapter actually work in the daily lives of human beings, young and old.
• Chapter Objectives. Following the introductory section of each chapter, we present a concise list of questions that are answered in the chapter to guide your reading. When you finish reading the chapter, return to the list and test yourself to see if you can respond to their intent; that is, can you analyze, can you apply, can you identify, can you define, can you describe?
• View Boxes. We have designed our boxes to expand on the material under discussion and to do so in a manner calculated to aid student retention. The view boxes are of three types:
  1. An Informed View. Here we present controversial issues and you are asked to give your opinion after you have studied the facts. In some cases these boxes are accompanied by an icon indicating that additional information can be found on the World Wide Web.
  2. An Applied View. Here you will see how the topics under discussion apply to an actual situation, in settings such as a classroom or a medical facility.
  3. A Sociocultural View. Here we analyze the contributions of different cultures to individual development, as well as research on newly discovered influences of aging, gender, and other social factors.
• Conclusion & Summary. At the end of each chapter you will find a brief concluding statement that summarizes the main themes of the chapter. This statement provides you with a quick check of the purpose of the chapter and the content covered. Immediately following the brief concluding section is a more detailed set of summary statements that are grouped according to the major topics of the chapter. This section should help you to review the chapter quickly and thoroughly.
• Key Terms. In addition to the list that appears at the end of each chapter, you will also find definitions of key terms within the chapter's margins. These terms are highlighted and explained in the context of the chapter. We urge you to spend time mastering the meaning of each of these terms and relate them to the context in which they appear.
• What Do You Think? Following the Key Terms, you will find a series of questions intended to have you demonstrate your knowledge of the chapter's content, not only by applying the material to different situations but also by asking you to be creative in answering the question or solving the problem.
• Suggested Readings. Interspersed in appropriate places throughout the text, you will find an annotated list of four or five books or journal articles that we think are particularly well suited to supplement the contents of the chapter. These references are not necessarily textbooks; they may not deal specifically with either education or psychology. We believe, however, that they shed an illuminating light upon the chapter's material.
• Student Study Guide. We include a student study guide in the body of the text, in the form of Guided Review sections, as one means of making the material as meaningful as possible and to aid retention.
• Chapter Review Test. At the end of each chapter we provide 15 to 20 sample test questions, along with an answer key, to allow students to check their understanding of the chapter's content.