Week 1 — Reading the Running Case: Periods, Domains, and Settings — Traditional alternative (no AI)
Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.
Assignment 1 of the term — read the running case the way the field reads any child, and explain the field to someone new to it.
This week you learned what child development is, the three domains, the five periods, the core questions, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems. In this assignment you work four short problems on the running case, interpret each one, and explain the field to someone who has never studied it. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Child Observation Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.
The task
Your shared data is the course's running case (illustrative): an unnamed child written for this course and seen in 8 observation records, R1 to R8, each identifying the child by age and setting only. No real child, family, or program is described.
- R1, newborn, hospital birthing room
- R2, 9 months, family home
- R3, 14 months, childcare center at morning drop-off
- R4, 2½ years, the same childcare center's block area
- R5, 4 years, preschool classroom
- R6, 7 years, after-school program
- R7, 11 years, after-school club
- R8, 15 years, youth program
Read by the concept each record carries, R1 shows the physical domain; R2 the physical and cognitive domains; R3 all three; R4 the social-emotional domain; R5 and R6 the cognitive domain; R7 the social-emotional domain; and R8 all three. The periods are prenatal, infancy and toddlerhood (birth to about 2), early childhood (about 2 to 6), middle childhood (about 6 to 11), and adolescence (about 11 to 18).
Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic and citing your evidence:
- The running case holds 8 records, and 3 of them fall in infancy and toddlerhood. How many of its records fall after toddlerhood?
- Read by the concept each record carries, the running case shows the physical domain in 4 records, the cognitive domain in 5, and the social-emotional domain in 4. How many domain readings is that in all?
- Of the running case's 8 records, 5 show exactly one domain each. How many of its records show more than one domain?
- You ask the 4 core questions (nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity, universal and context-specific change, normative and non-normative influences) of each of 2 scenes, the toddler's first morning at childcare and the teen's first job. How many question-and-scene pairs do you answer in all?
Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:
- Problem 1: name the period of each of those records, and explain why R7, at 11 years, shows that the periods are conventions with fuzzy edges.
- Problem 2: say in your own words what each of the three domains covers, and use R3 to explain how a change in one domain can affect another.
- Problem 3: name the records that show more than one domain, and for one of them explain what reading it as nature and nurture working together would add.
- Problem 4: place the teen's first job in all five of Bronfenbrenner's systems and say which system a parent's workplace is.
Explain it to a non-expert
A relative says, "Child development is really only about babies, and kids mostly turn out the way they were born." Write a 3–5 sentence message that corrects both parts of that claim in everyday words, using the span the field covers and the way genes and experience work together, and names one limit of what you can say after one week (for example, that the course has not yet taught the theories that explain why a child changes). Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.
For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker asking whether the "middle childhood" label on a summer camp's age group means every 8-year-old there will act the same. Model answer: "The label groups children of about 6 to 11 because they tend to share some things, which helps the camp plan activities. It is a convention, not a rule, so two 8-year-olds can still be very different. The edges are fuzzy too, so a child close to 11 might fit the older group equally well. Use the label to plan, then watch what each child actually does."
Use that pattern for your message to the relative, with your own wording and evidence.
Show your arithmetic and cite your evidence. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report, and check every age range and system placement against Chapter 1, without guessing which values, steps, or sources you used.
Deliverables
Submit a single report containing:
- the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
- your message to the relative, correcting both parts of the claim in everyday words and naming one limit; and
- a one-line restatement of the values you used (the running case's record, period, and domain counts), so your results are reproducible.
Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.
Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of Bronfenbrenner's nested systems with the teen's first job placed in each, plus a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.
How you'll be graded
The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.
Academic integrity and AI use
This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. Take every age range and definition from Chapter 1, and treat the running case as the illustrative teaching material it is. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.
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