Week 12 — Rules, Fairness, and the Word "Bullying": Reading a School-Age Child's Words — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 11 of the term — work four small counts from this week's pinned models, read record R7 and two school scenes with this week's concepts, and explain the bullying definition to a parent who has it wrong.

This week you met Erikson's industry vs. inferiority, self-esteem and social comparison, friendship and peer acceptance, stopbullying.gov's definition of bullying and what it tells adults and peers to do, Kohlberg's three levels of moral reasoning with Gilligan's critique, and family structures and transitions. In this assignment you work four short problems on this week's pinned models, interpret each one, and explain the bullying definition to a parent who has it wrong. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Child Observation Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 3's habit of keeping what a child said apart from what it might mean, and on Week 10's point that aggression can mean shutting a child out on purpose.

The task

Record R7 of the running case is illustrative: it was built for this course and describes no real child. At 11 years, in an after-school club, the child argues that a game's rule "is the rule, but it isn't fair if new kids never get a turn", and says a best friend is "someone who has your back". This week you also met two illustrative school scenes. In the lunchroom seating dispute, two friends of equal standing argue once over a seat and one pushes the other's tray aside; the next day they sit together and it does not happen again. In the group chat, several classmates leave one classmate out of the class group chat on purpose, week after week, and post jokes about them.

A parent picking a child up from the club (illustrative) says, "My kid argued with a friend at lunch once. That's bullying, and the school should punish the other kid." Your job is to answer the way a child development student would, starting from a few plain numbers.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. Kohlberg described 3 levels of moral reasoning, each with 2 stages. How many stages are there in all?
2. Dataset E lists 5 of Erikson's childhood and adolescent stages, and industry vs. inferiority is stage 4. How many of the 5 stages come after it?
3. Stopbullying.gov's definition of bullying has 3 elements, and the lunchroom seating dispute meets 1 of them. How many elements are missing?
4. Record R7 was written at 11 years, and middle childhood runs at about 6 to 11. How many years does that approximate range span?

Beside each count, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: name Kohlberg's three levels in order, and explain with R7's rule statement why its reason is not about punishment or reward and why one sentence earns the child no level.
• Problem 2: name the crisis at stage 4 and its approximate period, and explain with the class election from the chapter (a child of about 9 who loses and says, "I'm bad at everything") that social comparison is typical and that self-esteem becomes differentiated by area.
• Problem 3: name the two elements the lunchroom dispute is missing and say why it is conflict rather than bullying, and name the type of bullying the group chat shows.
• Problem 4: say why the range is approximate, and read R7's rule statement through Gilligan's ethic of care, attention to who is being left out.

Explain it to a non-expert

Write a 3–5 sentence message to the parent. Explain, in everyday words, that stopbullying.gov counts something as bullying only when it is unwanted and aggressive, involves a real or perceived difference in power, and is repeated or likely to be repeated; that a one-time argument between friends of equal standing is conflict; and what the site tells adults to do when they do see bullying. Name one limit, such as that a power imbalance can be hard to see from outside, or that this course describes scenes and never decides about a real child. Be respectful: the parent cares about their child. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker who says, "My phone dropped one call in a tunnel, so the phone is broken." Model message: "A phone counts as broken when it fails in more than one way and keeps failing, not when one call drops in a place with no signal. One dropped call in a tunnel is the tunnel, not the phone. One fair caveat: if calls keep dropping in places with a strong signal, that is worth checking."

Use that pattern for the parent, with your own wording and evidence.

Your reflection. After you check your draft, write two or three sentences on one of these, your choice: (a) which problem changed how you would talk about a conflict between children, and why; or (b) which word or phrase in your first draft you replaced, and what the new wording gets right.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four results, each with the numbers and the arithmetic shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to the parent, explaining the 3 elements, that a one-time argument between equals is conflict, and what stopbullying.gov tells adults to do, with one limit;
• your reflection, on the option you chose; and
• a one-line restatement of the numbers you used, so your results can be checked.

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 the three-element check with a short explanation. 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 any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Describe record R7 and the two school scenes only as the course describes them, name people only by role, never assign a Kohlberg level to a real child or call a real child a bully, never rank families or cultures, and report stopbullying.gov's guidance as the site states it. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com