Developmental Ecopsychology

For more than fifteen years, I have worked at the intersection of human development and the natural world. My professional path has included running a small press, fifteen years consulting in educational publishing, field-based teaching in outdoor settings, graduate study completed alongside the home education of our twin sons through high school, and a PhD in Applied Ecopsychology earned while living outside Yellowstone National Park.

Across these roles, a central question has guided my work: under what conditions does human capacity organize coherently, and under what conditions does it narrow, fragment, or disengage?

Longitudinal observation across home, classroom, athletic, and natural environments revealed a consistent pattern. Capacity is not a fixed trait located within an individual. It is context-sensitive and environmentally mediated. Regulation precedes sustained cognition. Relational stability precedes intellectual risk-taking. Adult nervous system states shape developmental fields in ways that are rarely named but consistently observable.

Educational systems, family rhythms, architectural spaces, and cultural expectations all participate in the organization of capacity. When environmental conditions align with a person’s developmental profile, growth appears integrated and self-sustaining. When conditions are chronically dysregulating, effort intensifies while coherence decreases. What is often interpreted as deficit may be an expression of ecological mismatch.

The work I was doing did not fit neatly within therapy, coaching, or traditional educational consulting. It was developmental but nonclinical. Ecological but not wilderness therapy. Educational but not confined to academic planning. Developmental ecopsychology emerged as a way to name this integration: a field of inquiry and practice concerned with how regulation, relationship, environment, and identity co-organize across the lifespan.

Drawing from ecological systems theory, lifespan developmental psychology, embodied cognition, and decades of lived and observed experience, developmental ecopsychology approaches growth as reciprocal and relational. It attends to seasons of life, sensory integration, adult regulation, institutional stress patterns, and the environmental conditions that support or inhibit coherence.

This framework continues to evolve. Like development itself, its articulation deepens over time through observation, dialogue, and applied practice. The writing emerging from this work is intentionally developmental: refined through lived experience, longitudinal reflection, and collaborative inquiry rather than fixed as static doctrine.

My current work applies this framework through nonclinical developmental practice and educational consultation. I collaborate with families and educators who are interested in restoring the ecological foundations of learning and supporting development in ways that protect identity, cultivate regulation, and allow capacity to emerge in context.

For conversations, professional correspondence, and permissions: email me.