Week 3 — Studying Children: Research, Observation, and Ethics
Why this matters
You'll need these skills for a preschool teacher's notes for a family conference, a nurse's chart from a toddler's checkup, and a social worker's write-up of a home visit: each has to say what a child did without judging the child.
In plain language
This week is about how we learn anything true about children, and how we do it without harming them. You meet the research methods, meaning the planned ways researchers gather evidence, from watching children at play to running careful experiments. You learn five observation records, meaning written accounts of what a child did, that teachers and researchers use every day. You practice keeping what a child did apart from what you think it means. You also learn the ethics of studying children, set out by the Society for Research in Child Development in principles approved in 2021, and the course's own observation rules.
- Already covered: Week 1 gave you the domains and the running case; Week 2 gave you the theories.
- This week: research methods and designs, five observation records, two columns, and ethics.
- How they connect: a theory needs evidence, and this week shows where it comes from.
- Where we're going next: Week 4, Prenatal Development and Birth.
Focus
How do we learn anything true about children, and how do we record it fairly?
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- [ ] tell correlational from experimental research
- [ ] tell a longitudinal design from a cross-sectional one
- [ ] write a running record and an anecdotal record
- [ ] keep description apart from interpretation
- [ ] follow consent, assent, and the observation rules
To-do
Plan your week
- Read Chapter 3 (~40–50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
- Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
- Do the practice exercises (15–25 minutes).
- Do the Child Observation Workshop (about 90 minutes), discussion, and assignment.
- Take the quiz.
This week's checkpoint: rewrite one line of a record so a second observer would agree with every word.
You've got this
Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if stuck.
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