Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development

Elizabeth Dowing is the Director of Research for The ImagineNations Group, where she is in charge of developing a global survey of young people focused on what they believe needs to happen in their respective countries and the world for the Millennium Development Goals to be met by the target year 2015. She works with local, national, regional, and international research partners to design and implement effective, sustainable research practices for ImagineNations. Elizabeth received her Ph.D. in Child Development from Tufts University, where she was a nominee for the Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching and was awarded the Graduate Student Award for Academic Excellence. She has taught human development courses as an adjunct professor at Tufts University and Boston College. She was trained in the development and analysis of assessment tools and in research related to the intergration between positive youth development and the promotion of civil society. Elizabeth is author of numerous publications in leading journals and handbooks of human development.

W. George Scarlett is senior lecturer and deputy chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. He received a BA from Yale University, an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a PhD (in developmental psychology) from Clark University. He has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (published by SAGE). His second most recent book was Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management (also published by SAGE). He has been the lead author or co-author of chapters in The Handbook of Child Psychology and The Handbook of Life-Span Development – both leading resources for professionals conducting research on children and adolescents. In addition, he has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to children, including articles on behavior management, and he has been on the research teams of several internationally known leaders, including Ed Zigler at Yale (early research on Head Start) and Howard Gardner at Harvard (early research on multiple intelligences). He has served as a consultant to the Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell Head Start systems in Massachusetts and directed a residential summer camp for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. Currently, he is a regular consultant to reporters and news agencies, communicating to the general public best practices for raising and educating children and youth. At Tufts, in addition to his administrative duties as the department’s deputy chair, he teaches courses on approaches to problem behavior, children’s play, and spiritual development, and writes a column, “Kids These Days,” for Tufts Magazine.