child development theories and themes PDF

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notes on the main themes used to frame childhood development. taught by woods...

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Child development: Theories and themes Tuesday, January 17, 2017

12:12 PM

Review: inv Child Development History Early philosophers' views pf children's' development - Both Plato and Aristotle believed that the long term welfare of society was based on its children - Plato ○ Emphasized self-control and discipline ○ Children are born with innate knowledge - Aristotle (the younger generation) ○ Fit environment to the needs of the individual child ○ Knowledge comes from experience Later philosophers - John Locke ○ Tabula rasa § Clean slate ○ Children gain experience through education ○ Education should have adaptability (similar to Aristotle) ○ Adults help shape children's education - Jean-Jacques Rousseau ○ Discovery learning ○ Did not put emphasis on adults helping children learn, believed children were naturally inquisitive enough to discover and learn on their own ○ Book about Emily ○ Children learn principles from their environment Social reform movements - In the late 1800's/early 1900's: ○ Child labor (young children working long hours in dirty conditions/factories) ○ Children were seen as mini adults, small functioning parts of the family

Darwin's theory of Evolution - A biographical sketch of an infant (1877) Formal study of child development as a discipline - Freud focused on internal drives (Id, ego, superego) - John Watson focused on the environment and measurable behavior Themes of child development -

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Nature vs. nurture ○ Twins § Fraternal vs. identical § Identical twins are more biologically similar ○ Environment vs. biology ○ Nutrition matters based upon the level of need ○ Schizophrenia is passed down through genetics § It’s a combination of nature and nurture, but we know that people who are genetically predisposed have a higher risk The active child ○ How might an infant or young child engage their environment? § Who they interact with § What sports they take interest in § What toys they play with § Attentional patterns § Use of language § Play Continuity vs. discontinuity ○ Separate stages of development? § The butterfly model ○ We continually grow § The tree model ○ Changes in height can be viewed as either continuous or discontinuous § Depending on whether we look at the subjects total height or just their change in height from one year to the next Mechanisms of developmental change ○ In general the interaction of genes and environment determines both what changes occur and when those changes occur ○ Effortful attention

Effortful attention § Pushing past immediate gratification § The ability to delay gratification ○ The marshmallow test ○ The limbic system/anterior cingulate The sociocultural context ○ Refers to the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child's environment Individual differences ○ Children's genes, their treatment by other people, their subjective reactions to other peoples treatment of them, and their choice of environments all contribute to the differences among children, even those within the same family Research and children's welfare ○

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Things to know: scientific inquiry - What are the steps to the scientific method? - Reliability? Validity? - Correlation? - Known direction for correlation - What are experimental and control groups? - What is an independent variable, a dependent variable, and extraneous variable? - What are cross sectional, longitudinal and micro- studies?...