Growing out of an International Society of the Study of Behavioral Development-sponsored symposium, this book discusses the basic assumptions that led the contributors to conduct research in the field of narrative development. This collection gathers their research reflections and varying approaches to narrative and its development. It illustrates each type of approach and highlights their respective motives. The book presents some of the basic motivating assumptions of each approach and provides insight into what holds each set of assumptions together, potentially transforming them into actions. This book will serve as an excellent text for courses emphasizing multiple approaches to the study of narrative.

The editor has organized this volume in accordance with the six main points of the symposium:
* Specification of the Domain--how narratives are defined in terms of textual structures, knowledge thereof, interactive moves, sociocultural conventions, and the like.
* The Individual's Involvement in the Developmental Process--the relationship between some internal or external forces and the organism's own active participation in the developmental process.
* The Course of Development--if it is continuous or discontinuous; whether it proceeds in an additive fashion or whether regressive phases occur; and what changes at different points in the developmental process signify.
* The Goal of Development--the implicit notion of a telos, a target or end-point that needs to occur in the developmental process.
* Mechanisms of Development--the forces and/or conditions that both instigate the developmental process and keep it moving toward its telos.
* Methodology--where and how to look in the establishment of a developmental framework.

This book is an indispensable text in the fields of narrative and/or discourse, linguistics, language studies, psychology, and education in general.