Child Development Essay

14223 Words57 Pages
Part 1: Theory and research in child development Chp1: History, Theory, and Applied Directions Learning Objectives After completing Chapter 1, you should be able to: • Answer the questions: What is child development, and what factors stimulated expansion of the field? • Answer the question: How can we divide child development into sensible, manageable domains and periods? • Identify three basic issues on which child development theories take a stand. • Describe major historical influences on theories of child development. • Identify the theories that influenced the study of child development in the mid-twentieth century. • Describe recent theoretical perspectives on child development. • Identify the stand taken by each major theory on the basic issues of child development. • Explain the importance of social policies for safeguarding children’s well-being, and cite factors that affect the policy-making process, noting the role of child development research. |Chapter 1 Summary | Child Development as a Scientific, Applied, and Interdisciplinary Field What is child development, and what factors stimulated expansion of the field? • Child development is the study of human constancy and change from conception through adolescence. It is part of a larger discipline known as developmental psychology or human development, which includes the entire lifespan. Research on child development has been stimulated by both scientific curiosity and social pressures to better the lives of children. Our knowledge is interdisciplinary-it has grown through the combined efforts of people from many fields of study. How can we divide child development into sensible, manageable domains and periods? • To make the
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