Build a Foundation Towards a Career Working With Children
Child Psychology is a compelling area of study. Children are continually evolving from the moment they are born, learning from every interaction and fine tuning their skills. Throughout infancy they form attachments with caregivers, develop language, and learn to walk and explore their environment. Later on children develop a sense of what is right and wrong, they learn social roles and how to think abstractly.
Studying child psychology is valuable for several reasons:
- Understanding Development: Child psychology provides insights into the cognitive, emotional, and social development of children. It helps us understand how children grow, learn, and mature, which is crucial for parents, educators, and policymakers.
- Effective Parenting: Knowledge of child psychology equips parents with tools and strategies to nurture their children’s development effectively. It helps them understand their children’s needs, behaviours, and emotions, fostering a healthier parent-child relationship.
- Education: Educators benefit from understanding child psychology to create developmentally appropriate curriculum and teaching strategies. Recognizing the diverse learning styles and needs of children allows educators to provide more effective instruction and support.
- Early Intervention: Child psychologists play a crucial role in identifying and addressing developmental issues or psychological disorders early on. Early intervention can prevent long-term problems and promote healthy development.
- Social Policy and Advocacy: Understanding child psychology informs the development of social policies and programs aimed at supporting children’s well-being. Advocacy efforts can be more informed and effective when backed by research in child psychology.
- Mental Health: Child psychologists help address mental health issues affecting children, such as anxiety, depression, and trauma. By providing therapy and interventions tailored to children’s needs, they contribute to their emotional well-being.
- Parenting Support: Child psychologists offer guidance and support to parents facing challenges such as behavioural issues, sibling rivalry, or divorce. They provide strategies to promote positive parenting practices and strengthen family relationships.
- Research and Innovation: Research in child psychology drives innovation in understanding child development and improving interventions. This research contributes to advancements in fields such as education, healthcare, and social services.
Overall, studying child psychology is essential for promoting the well-being and healthy development of children, supporting families, and informing policies and practices that impact children’s lives.
Why Psychologists Study Childhood Development
Psychologists study children and their development because it helps us to understand what is normal behaviour for a child at any particular age. This helps us to recognise when a child might have problems and if they need extra support. The study of child psychology also helps us to understand more about ourselves as people, our relationships and families.
By studying this course you will learn:
- What is meant by child development.
- What is involved in different areas of development, such as: cognitive, moral, social and language development.
- How development can be influenced by nature, nurture, temperament, parents, schools and other factors.
- To apply your knowledge and understanding to real life observations.
Graduates will develop a solid foundation in child psychology which they can use towards further study or qualifications.
The knowledge you develop can be applied to a range of different professions which involve working with children.
Course Structure & Content:
There are 12 lessons in this course:
Introduction to Child Psychology
- Levels of development.
- Nature or nurture.
- Isolating hereditary characteristics.
- Cause versus correlation.
- Continuity versus discontinuity.
- Cross sectional and longitudinal studies.
- Reliability of verbal reports.
The New-born Infant
- The Interactionist Approach.
- Range of Reaction.
- Niche Picking.
- Temperament Stimulus seeking.
- Emotional Disturbances During Pregnancy.
States and Senses of the Infant
- Sensory Discrimination.
- Infant States (sleep, inactivity, waking, crying etc.).
- Why are Psychologists so concerned with defining and describing infant states?
- Habituation.
- Crying.
- Soothing a Distressed Baby.
- Sound Discrimination.
- Smell and Taste Discrimination.
- Visual Discrimination.
- Depth Perception.
- Oral Sensitivity.
Learning
- Habituation.
- Vicarious Learning.
- Classical Conditioning.
- Operant Conditioning.
- Reinforcement.
- The Importance of Learning Control, etc.
Emotions and Socialisation
- Producing and Recognising Emotional Expression.
- Smiling, Biological Explanation.
- Perceptual Recognition Explanation.
- The Mother-Child Attachment.
- Freudian Approach Bowlby’s Approach.
- Social Learning Approach.
- Harlow’s Approach.
- The Role of Cognition in Attachment Formation.
- Maternal Attachment.
- Fear, Social Learning.
- Perceptual Recognition.
- Women’s Dual Role as Mothers and Workers, day care.
Cognitive Development
- Developing the Ability to Reason.
Language Development
- Is language learned, or are we genetically programmed with it?
- The Social Learning Approach.
- The Hypothesis Testing Approach.
- Under Extending.
Intelligence
- Measuring Intelligence.
- Cultural Bias.
- IQ.
- Testing Intelligence as a tool.
Socialisation: Part A
- Social Cognition – self-awareness, awareness of others as individuals, the development of empathy, taking turns, having a point of view/perspective, ability to see something from another person’s perspective.
- Friendships.
- Social Scripts, Scripts that Pretend Play.
Morality
- Moral development.
- Aggression & Altruism.
- Freud’s Approach.
- Piaget’s Approach.
- Kohlberg’s Approach.
Sexuality
- Freud’s phases (oral phase, anal phase, phallic phase, latent phase, genital phase).
- The Acquisition of Gender and Role Identity.
- Concept of Psycho-Social Development.
Socialisation: Part B
- The Family Influence.
- Discipline.
- Siblings.
- Family Structures.
- School Influence.
- Peer Influence.
- Acceptance and Rejection.
- Imitation and Reinforcement.
COURSE AIMS
* Identify key concepts and issues in child psychology
* Understand theories on the psychology of the newborn infant
* Explain the different types of sense discrimination that babies develop
* Identify how children learn and influences on learning
* Discuss theories of emotion and their basis in child behaviour
* Explain how children develop cognitively
* Explain how children develop language
* Explain influences on the development of intelligence in a child
* Explain personal aspects of socialisation
* Explain factors affecting the development of morality in children
* Explain the development of sexuality within children
* Explain the impact of schooling and family structures on personality development
