Development means growth, progress and positive change in many aspects of life. It may refer to economic growth and increasing people’s income, social progress including literacy and health and the provision of public services. It can be viewed at the community, regional, national and international levels.
The term is a difficult one to define, because it encompasses so many different issues. Some people consider countries that have a higher GNP per capita to be more developed than other nations, but this is only a part of the story. Other indicators of development include poverty, sustainability, and the amount of energy a country uses.
Professionals and researchers have developed a number of definitions and emphases for the word. Noted Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen, for example, created the capability approach, which defined development as a tool enabling people to reach their highest level of ability through granting freedom of action, i.e., freedom of economic, social and family actions, etc.
Some theorists, such as Piaget and Erickson, assume that pathways of developmental change are normative and universal, and that all individuals pass through them in the same sequence at the same ages. Other theorists, however, who favor lifespan or ecological systems approaches, believe that a variety of different patterns and pathways of developmental change are possible depending on the context in which they occur.
Another underlying assumption in the theories of development is that it is caused by both nature and nurture. However, most researchers do not support nativist or environmentalist meta-theories and prefer interactionist meta-theories, such as contextualist and systems models.