Arnold Gesell

Arnold Gesell was born in Alma, Wisconsin in 1880. He received his Ph.D. from Clark University in 1906. It was while studying here that he was motivated to specialize in child development by studying with G. Stanley Hall, a prominent American psychologist. In 1915, at age 30, Gesell received an M.D. from Yale University. He then went on to be an assistant professor at Yale. During this time he established the Clinic of Child Development and served as director from 1911 to 1948.

Gesell started his study of children in hopes of understanding why retardation occurs. It was during his studies of retarded children that he realized that an understanding of normal children was necessary before anyone could understand abnormal children. He then began to focus his studies on the development of normal children. Gesell was the first to use a quantitative study of human development from birth through adolescence.

He began working with pre-school age children and later divided children into two age ranges, 5-10 and 10-16. Gesell used motion pictures to help record and analyze the behavior of the children. It was through his research of these children that physical and mental development in infants, children, and adolescents are comparable and parallel orderly process (“Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology” 2001). Gesell then had researchers continue to study children. These researchers found information which proved useful to educators and parents. The results of these studies led Gesell to create the Gesell Development Schedules. These schedules can be used with children from four weeks to six years. The Gesell Development Schedule allows parents to find the developmental age or developmental quotient, “the portion of normal development present at any age” (“Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology” 2001).

I believe that the work that Gesell has done will continue to influence our educational society. I believe that with the updating of Gesell’s developmental patterns will be used by parents and teachers for years to come. The Gesell Institute’s use of maturation levels to divide students into classrooms should also spread. As more people become aware of the effectiveness of this process I can see more schools dividing gra

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