Week 1 — Introduction: What Child Development Is

Why this matters

A future teacher greeting a nervous toddler at a childcare door and a youth-program leader helping a teen through a first job both need the same habit: seeing a child's body, mind, and relationships together, inside the settings around the child.

In plain language

This week is about one big question: how and why do children change as they grow? Child development is the field that studies that change, from before birth to the end of the teen years. You will sort change into three domains — the body, the mind, and feelings and relationships — and see how each one pulls on the others. You will meet five periods — rough age spans such as early childhood — that act as handy labels, not hard lines. You will also meet the running case — one made-up child the course follows from birth to age 15 — and Bronfenbrenner's (1979) map of the settings that surround every child.

• This week: what the field is, the three domains, the five periods, the core questions, Bronfenbrenner's systems, and the running case.
• How they connect: this is the foundation; every later week uses these tools.
• Where we're going next: Week 2, Theories of Development.

Focus

How and why do children change, and how do you see that change across domains and settings?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] sort a child's behavior into the three domains
• [ ] place an age in a period and explain its fuzzy edges
• [ ] explain nature and nurture as working together
• [ ] place a child's settings in Bronfenbrenner's systems

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 1 (~45–55 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Work the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the Child Observation Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: sort one running-case record into domains and place it in a period.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com