Beyond Giving Knowledge Away: Rethinking the Responsibilities of Developmental Science
Abstract
Developmental science has long emphasized public engagement through calls to “give knowledge away” and inform policy, practice, and public discourse. This article argues that this orientation is necessary, but no longer sufficient. Developmental knowledge is produced, interpreted, and applied within complex systems shaped by technological, environmental, and institutional forces. In these systems, findings may be simplified, selectively used, or contested. The article proposes three interrelated responsibilities for developmental scientists and other developmentalists: to know, to interpret, and to engage. It further argues that engagement includes attention to the conditions that enable developmental knowledge to inform policy, practice, and public discourse. Together, these considerations advance a broader understanding of the role of developmental science in contemporary society, with particular relevance for practitioners, policymakers, and organizations working with infants, toddlers, and their families during the critical years from birth through 3.
The Evolving Role of Developmental Science
Over the past several decades, developmental science has increasingly embraced a commitment to public engagement. This commitment is reflected in the Society for Research in Child Development’s longstanding emphasis on “giving child and youth development knowledge away,” which stems from George Miller’s (1969) presidential address to the American Psychological Association and his call for “giving psychology away” in the service of society’s needs. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1974) further developed this idea in an explicit call to the field. It is also reflected in the contributions of scholars across developmental science and allied fields, including Eleanor E. Maccoby, Edward Zigler, Jack P. Shonkoff, Vonnie C. McLoyd, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Jane Waldfogel, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Dante Cicchetti, Cynthia García Coll, Michael Rutter, Arnold Sameroff, and many others who have shaped the foundation for how developmental knowledge engages with policy, practice, and public life (e.g., Sameroff, 2010; Shonkoff & Bales, 2011; Yoshikawa et al., 2012; Zigler, 1998). This tradition has encouraged scholars to move beyond insular academic discourse and to consider how research on children and families might inform policy, practice, and public understanding. At its best, this tradition reflects a recognition that knowledge about development carries implications that extend beyond the academy.
Questions about the responsibilities of scholars to engage beyond their immediate fields are not new, and they are not limited to developmental science. In 1945, as World War II continued, Dwight Macdonald examined the difficult question of collective responsibility and the extent to which people bear responsibility for the actions of their governments. Building on Macdonald, Noam Chomsky (1967), writing during the Vietnam War, argued that those with specialized knowledge have obligations that extend beyond producing knowledge to include interpreting it and engaging with public life. These arguments emerged in contexts quite different from developmental science, but the underlying logic applies: specialized expertise is not a private resource. It carries obligations to clarify, interpret, and engage that become more pressing, not less, when the systems in which knowledge circulates are under strain.
The contexts in which developmental knowledge is produced and used have changed in important ways. This perspective aligns with emerging efforts to conceptualize development across interacting systems spanning biological, social, and broader environmental contexts. Scientific findings now move rapidly across digital, institutional, and policy environments, where they are often simplified, selectively interpreted, or contested. In these contexts, developmental knowledge does not simply move outward from the academy. It is taken up, reshaped, and embedded within systems that have real and immediate implications for babies, young children, families, and the professionals who support them. These questions are especially consequential in early childhood, where developmental knowledge directly shapes caregiving guidance, home visiting, early intervention, infant and early childhood mental health practice, pediatric care, child care, and public understanding of what babies and young children need to thrive.
These conditions raise a central question: is the dissemination of knowledge sufficient in a context where that knowledge is unevenly interpreted and variably applied? This article argues that the responsibilities of developmental scientists extend beyond “giving knowledge away” to include active engagement in how knowledge is interpreted, translated, and used. Developmental science does not simply describe children’s lives; it contributes to the frameworks through which those lives are understood, supported, and shaped. As such, the production of knowledge carries role-based responsibilities that unfold not only in its generation, but also in its interpretation and its engagement with policy, practice, and public discourse.
This perspective builds on longstanding ecological and transactional frameworks, which situate development within real-world systems and emphasize the reciprocal relationships between children, families, communities, and environments. In contemporary contexts, where developmental processes are shaped across increasingly interconnected biological, social, ecological, and technological systems, the responsibilities of developmental scientists may likewise extend across these domains.
Developmental Knowledge Has Real-World Influence
Developmental science occupies a distinctive position among the social and behavioral sciences because it influences how society understands children and families. Its findings do more than describe development. They also inform how societies define healthy development, identify risk, and design supports and interventions. Concepts such as attachment, adversity, resilience, and developmental timing have shaped policy frameworks, institutional practices, and public discourse across domains including education, health care, and child welfare (Heckman, 2006; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Yoshikawa et al., 2012).
As a result, developmental knowledge has important real-world consequences (García Coll et al., 1996; McLoyd, 1998). It influences how children and families are understood, how systems are organized, and how resources and supports are allocated. Research on early childhood development has informed investments in home visiting, infant and early childhood mental health services, early intervention, early education, and family support. Studies of adversity have shaped screening and prevention strategies, and work on social-emotional development has influenced early learning practices. These are important and often positive contributions.
At the same time, the translation of developmental science into policy and practice is rarely straightforward. Scientific findings are often translated into simple messages that may not fully capture their complexity or limitations. For example, research on early brain development may be interpreted in ways that emphasize determinism over plasticity. Similarly, findings on adversity may be used to support interventions without sufficient attention to the broader conditions that shape family well-being. In other cases, evidence may be selectively mobilized to support particular policy positions, or contested within broader ideological debates.
These effects are not evenly distributed. The interpretation and application of knowledge often intersect with existing inequalities, shaping how risk is identified, how interventions are targeted, and how families are understood. Racialized communities, Indigenous peoples, and families living in poverty have historically been most likely to experience developmental knowledge through deficit-oriented frameworks. These frameworks locate risk within individuals and families while obscuring the broader conditions that create unequal opportunity. In this way, the move from research to policy can reinforce the very inequities that developmental science, at its best, seeks to challenge.
These dynamics reflect the reality that developmental knowledge often moves into systems that require clarity, action, and justification. In moving from research to application, complexity is often reduced, uncertainty minimized, and context narrowed. This is not simply a problem of misunderstanding; it is a feature of how knowledge functions within institutional and policy environments.
Recognizing developmental knowledge as a form of influence means the role of developmental scientists cannot be limited to producing and sharing findings. Rather, it includes attention to how knowledge is interpreted, represented, and used across the systems in which it circulates.
In some cases, developmental findings become organizing frameworks for entire policy domains. Research on early adversity, for example, has informed screening practices, prevention strategies, and funding priorities across health, education, and child welfare systems. At the same time, such frameworks may be taken up unevenly, emphasizing individual-level intervention while underemphasizing broader structural conditions that shape exposure to adversity in the first place. These patterns illustrate how developmental knowledge can simultaneously illuminate important processes and, in its application, contribute to partial or imbalanced responses.
Three Responsibilities of Developmental Scientists
If developmental knowledge carries influence across systems, then developmental scientists have three interrelated responsibilities: to know, to interpret, and to engage.
Responsibility to Know
The first responsibility is to produce knowledge that is rigorous, transparent, and attentive to complexity. This includes careful attention to research design, measurement, and analysis, as well as a commitment to acknowledging uncertainty and the limits of inference.
In a multisystem context, this responsibility also includes recognizing the scope and boundaries of one’s work. Findings derived from specific populations or institutional contexts may not apply across all settings. Biological, social, and environmental processes may interact in ways that resist simple causal explanations. The increasing availability of large datasets and advanced analytic techniques offers new opportunities for insight, but it also introduces risks of overinterpretation and misplaced confidence in precision.
The responsibility to know includes not only generating knowledge, but also clearly explaining its limits. This involves transparency about uncertainty, attention to replication and robustness, and care in distinguishing between association and causation. It also requires an awareness of how methodological choices shape the questions that can be asked and answered, as well as which populations and contexts are made visible or invisible by those choices.
It also requires honest reckoning with whose lives have anchored the field’s foundational knowledge. Much of what developmental science has treated as normative in attachment, cognition, social development, and other areas was built on samples that excluded or marginalized Black, Indigenous, and other racialized families. These samples often failed to adequately represent the caregiving contexts and relationship dynamics encountered by practitioners working with infants, toddlers, young children, and their caregivers. The responsibility to know includes actively working to correct this, not only by broadening samples, but also by centering community knowledge, questions, and frameworks that emerge from communities historically positioned as subjects of study rather than partners in research (Tsethlikai & Rogoff, 2013).
Responsibility to Interpret
The second responsibility is to interpret developmental knowledge with care. Scientific findings do not speak for themselves. They are translated into concepts, narratives, and frameworks that shape how they are understood by policymakers, practitioners, and the public. This translation process actively shapes the meaning and implications of developmental knowledge. Scientists therefore bear responsibility for how their findings are explained and interpreted. Interpretation is not simply what happens after discovery; it is fundamental to how developmental knowledge acquires meaning in the world.
Today, interpretation often happens through multiple channels, including media coverage, policy briefs, professional guidance, social media, and institutional communications. As findings move across these contexts, they may be simplified, reframed, or combined with other sources of information. Research on early brain development may be translated into claims about critical periods that understate the role of ongoing plasticity (Bailey et al., 2017; Bruer, 1999), while findings on adversity may be framed in ways that emphasize individual risk without sufficient attention to broader structural conditions (Finkelhor, 2018; Lacey & Minnis, 2020). These interpretations can shape policy priorities and public understanding in ways that are only loosely connected to the underlying evidence or to community held knowledge and interpretation.
In early childhood, developmental knowledge often enters public life through guidance directed at parents, other caregivers, and professionals. Messages about attachment, co-regulation, language development, adversity, or developmental milestones can influence how parents and caregivers understand themselves and their children. These messages can be supportive, but they can also increase surveillance, blame, or anxiety. The interpretation of developmental science therefore has relational consequences, not only policy consequences.
These interpretations carry consequences for racialized and Indigenous communities, whose experiences of adversity are often rooted in histories of structural violence, colonization, and ongoing discrimination (Cooper et al., 2008; García Coll et al., 1996; McLoyd, 1998; Neblett, 2023). When developmental science frames these experiences primarily as individual or family-level risk, it can inadvertently normalize the conditions that produce harm. It can also lend scientific legitimacy to interventions that focus on communities rather than on the systems acting on them.
The responsibility to interpret includes clarifying what findings do and do not support, situating results within broader bodies of evidence, and in resisting forms of simplification that obscure complexity. It may involve engaging with how research is represented in public discourse, contributing to more accurate interpretations, and acknowledging the uncertainties and limitations inherent in scientific work (Sarewitz, 2004; Jasanoff, 2004). In this sense, interpretation is not secondary or optional. It is a central component of scientific responsibility, particularly in a field where knowledge has direct implications for the lives of babies, young children, and families.
Responsibility to Engage
The third responsibility is to engage with the systems in which developmental knowledge is applied, including policy, institutional decision-making, and public discourse. Engagement does not require partisan advocacy, nor does it mean every developmental scientist must engage in the same way. Rather, it reflects the recognition that developmental knowledge shapes the systems that influence children’s lives, and that developmental scientists have an important role in helping those systems better understand and support children and families. Engagement is not an additional responsibility layered onto developmental science. It is a natural extension of how developmental knowledge functions within the systems it seeks to understand and improve.
Engagement can take many forms, including collaborating with policymakers and practitioners, serving in advisory roles, contributing to public communication, partnering across disciplines, and helping translate research into practice. The appropriate approach will vary across individuals, organizations, and settings. What remains consistent is the underlying principle: developmental scientists are uniquely positioned to help when research is misrepresented, selectively applied, or disconnected from the evidence (Dodge, 2009). Choosing not to engage also shapes how developmental knowledge is used. This is especially important when developmental knowledge influences decisions affecting communities that have historically been marginalized, including racialized and Indigenous communities, where the stakes of misinterpretation or overreach are especially high.
Engagement should always be grounded in the core commitments of the field. Developmental scientists operate within domains of expertise that have limits, and engagement should be grounded in evidence, careful analysis, transparency about uncertainty, and humility. The aim is not to replace other forms of expertise or decision-making, but to contribute to a more informed understanding of the systems that shape development.
An especially important, and often overlooked, dimension of engagement concerns the conditions that make knowledge production and use possible in the first place. Scientific inquiry depends on environments that support the generation, interpretation, and application of knowledge, including stable research funding, academic freedom, public trust in science (Oreskes, 2019; Gauchat, 2012; Lewandowsky et al., 2017), and institutions that support independent inquiry. Today, these conditions are not guaranteed. Pressures on research institutions, limits on academic freedom, and declining public trust in science create real risks for the field’s ability to answer important questions about children and families. For early childhood professionals, these are not abstract concerns. The evidence that informs home visiting, infant and early childhood mental health, pediatric care, early intervention, and family support depends on these same conditions. And, once again, these pressures are not felt uniformly. Research programs focused on racialized and Indigenous communities (Tsethlikai et al., 2024), sexual and gender minority families and caregivers (Mueller, 2025), community-based participatory approaches (Opara, 2025), and scholars from systemically excluded groups (Hoppe et al., 2019) often face the greatest institutional precarity. Protecting the conditions that allow developmental science to flourish also means recognizing which communities, research areas, and scholars are most vulnerable when those conditions weaken.
From this perspective, engagement also includes helping protect the conditions that allow developmental science to inform children, families, professionals, and policymakers. Depending on the situation, this may include explaining the implications when research funding is reduced, correcting inaccurate interpretations of research, or contributing to efforts that strengthen public trust in evidence. These are foundational concerns because they determine whether developmental science can continue to improve the lives of children and families.
It is important to note that these considerations apply across the full range of developmental science, including areas that may appear more distal from policy or practice, such as research on language, cognition, or social understanding. In these domains, the pathways through which knowledge is taken up may be less direct. For instance, research on children’s theory of mind or executive function may seem remote from policy, yet has directly shaped educational readiness frameworks, school-entry screening practices, and assumptions about what children should be able to do and when. The forms of engagement correspondingly differ across these areas, but the interpretation and eventual application of such work still occur within broader systems that shape educational practices, assessment frameworks, and societal understandings of development. As such, the responsibilities outlined here do not imply uniform expectations for action, but rather suggest that all areas of developmental science participate – directly or indirectly – in processes through which knowledge is interpreted, mobilized, and given meaning.
Engaging Across Systems
Today’s developmental contexts are shaped by interconnected biological, social, ecological, and technological systems. Children’s development is shaped not only by their immediate environments, but also by broader conditions including environmental change, institutional structures, and technological infrastructures. These conditions themselves are in rapid flux.
Developmental knowledge likewise moves across these systems. Research findings may inform clinical practice, educational approaches, social policy, and public discourse, often simultaneously and in ways that interact unpredictably. This creates opportunities to improve outcomes for children and families, but it also creates risks when research is interpreted differently across settings.
This multisystem context underscores the importance of transdisciplinary collaboration. No single field can fully account for the range of systems that shape development, and developmental scientists who engage beyond their immediate domain must navigate different ways of working, institutional constraints, and professional norms. These challenges require careful, context-sensitive approaches – but they do not diminish the case for engagement. In fact, the complexity of today’s developmental contexts makes it even more important for developmental scientists to participate in the conversations where research is interpreted, translated, and applied.
Implications for Developmental Science
Taken together, these considerations suggest a broader understanding of the role of developmental science. The field is concerned not only with generating knowledge about development, but also with understanding how that knowledge moves across and interacts with the systems that shape the lives of babies, young children, and families. In many ways, this represents a return to commitments the field has long embraced. It also challenges us to fully consider what those commitments require in today’s context.
This perspective has implications for how developmental scientists are trained, how institutions support their work, and how the profession defines scholarly contribution. It highlights the value of preparing developmental scientists to engage with policy and practice, communicate effectively across disciplines, translate research for broader audiences, and navigate today’s public discourse. Professional organizations, including SRCD and ZERO TO THREE, have roles to play in supporting such engagement (Lerner et al., 2000) through professional learning and training opportunities, incentives, and recognition of diverse forms of scholarly contribution, including those that may not fit neatly within traditional academic metrics.
Expanding these responsibilities also raises important questions about appropriate roles and boundaries. Not every developmental scientist will, or should, engage in the same ways. There are also real risks in overreach, including confusing scientific expertise with broader policy judgment. A pluralistic approach, in which individuals contribute in different ways based on their expertise, experience, and opportunities, is likely to be the strongest path forward. What matters is that the field collectively recognizes these responsibilities and works together to fulfill them in ways that strengthen research, practice, policy, and ultimately the well-being of children and families.
Conclusion
The commitment to “giving knowledge away” has played an important role in shaping developmental science’s commitment to public engagement. Today, however, this commitment is best understood not as the full extent of the field’s responsibilities, but as a starting point for a broader understanding of what developmental science requires.
By situating developmental science within the systems in which it is produced, interpreted, and applied, this framework builds on longstanding traditions while reflecting the complexity of today’s developmental contexts. The responsibilities to know, to interpret, and to engage are not separate stages in a linear process. They are interconnected dimensions of what it means to practice developmental science responsibly.
Most importantly, the responsibility to engage also includes protecting the conditions that make developmental knowledge possible, trustworthy, and useful. These conditions matter not only for the integrity of the field, but also for how developmental knowledge reaches and serves different communities. The consequences of how developmental science is interpreted and applied are not experienced equally.
The institutional, scientific, and civic environments that support developmental science are not guaranteed. They require ongoing investment, stewardship, and active participation. At a time when these conditions are under increasing pressure, the question of what developmental science owes the children and families it serves is more than an academic one. It is a practical question for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and organizational leaders alike. Every day, developmental knowledge shapes decisions about how babies and young children are cared for, supported, and given opportunities to thrive. Ultimately, the responsibilities to know, to interpret, and to engage exist so that developmental science improves the lives of babies, young children, and their families.
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Authors
Author
Chair, Canada Research in Child Well-Being, Professor of Social Work and Pediatrics, McGill University
Michael J. MacKenzie, PhD, MSW, is the Canada Research Chair in Child Well-Being and professor of social work and…
