Arnold Gesell

            Arnold Gesell was a psychologist and a physician. He was known for his interest in growth from a medical point of view. So you might ask why he is important in educational history. Gesell is most well known for having the Gesell Institute named after him and his work with child study.
             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.
             His philosophy was simple, that behavior is a function of structure and that humans develop in a patterned, predictable way. For forty plus years Gesell and his coworkers researched children, first at Yale University and then at Gesell Institute of Child Development in New Haven, Connecticut (Keirns 1991). Gesell focused on a small number of children rather than using a large number and not being able to get as in depth with the children. .
             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).