Child development

1. CHILD DEVELOPMENT
John W. Santrock

2. DEVELOPMENT
• The pattern of change that begins at
conception and continues through the life
span.

3. CHILD DEVELOPMENT
• Historical views of childhood
• Improving the lives of today’s children
• The modern study of child development
• Resilience, social policy, and children’s
development

4. Historical views of Childhood
• Original sin view
• Tabula rasa view
• Innate goodness view

5. Original sin view
• Advocate during the middle ages
• Children were perceived being born as evil
beings
• Goal of child rearing was to provide salvation,
to remove sin from child’s life

6. Tabula rasa view
• Proposed by English philosopher John Locke
• Argued that children are not innately ad but
like a “blank tablet”
• He believed that childhood experiences are
important in determining adult characteristics
• Advised parents to spend time with children
and to help in contributing in the society.

7. Innate goodness view
• Swiss-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
• Stressed that children are inherently good
• They should be permitted to grow naturally,
with little parental monitoring or constraint.

8. THE MODERN STUDY OF
CHILD DEVELOPMENT

9. 1. Methods for a New Science
• The direct study of children which
investigators directly observe children’s
behavior, conduct experiments, and obtain
information about children by questioning
their parents and teachers had an
auspicious/positive start in the work of these
child study experts.

10. 2. Theories for a New Science-Gesell
• Charles Darwin’s Evolutionary theory
– had made the scientific study of children when he
developed a baby journal for recording systematic
observations

11. Cont.
• Stages of Sigmund Freud
– Psychoanalytic theory believed that children are
rarely aware of the motives and reasons for their
behavior and the bulk of their mental life is
unconscious
– Child’s experiences with parents in the five (5)
years of life are important determinants of later
personality development

12. Cont.
• John Watson (1928) theory of behaviorism
– argued that children can be shaped into whatever
society wishes by examining and changing the
environment
– Believed that systematic observation of children’s
behavior under controlled conditions

13. Cont.
• James Mark Baldwin
– A pioneer in the study of children’s thought
– Introduced the term “GENETIC
EPISTEMOLOGY”(study of how children’s
knowledge changes over the course of their
development)
– Later Jean Piaget adopted his concept

14. Improving the Lives of Today’s Children
• Health & Well-being
– Jeopardized around the world because of many
factors like poverty, AIDS, starvation, poor, health
care, inadequate nutrition & exercise, alcohol &
drug abuse, & sexual abuse

15. • Families & Parenting
– Parent’s frustration is that they receive conflicting
messages about how to deal with their children.
• One expert urges them to be more permissive with
their children
• Another warns that their children should be controlled
& discipline to avoid being spoiled brats

16. • Education
– Extremely important of children’s lives
– Mentoring involves a more experienced, usually
older individual acting as a guide, role model, or
teacher to help someone who is less experienced
become more competent

17. Sociocultural Contexts: Culture,
Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

18. • Culture
– encompasses the behavior patterns, beliefs and all
other products of a particular group of people
that are passed on from generation to generation.

19. • Ethnicity
– refers to characteristics that are rooted in cultural
heritage, including nationality, race, religion and
language
– Central to the development of ETHNIC IDENTITY
(a sense of membership in an ethnic group, based
on share language, religion, customs, values,
history and race)

20. • Socio-economic status (SES)
– refers to the grouping of people with similar
occupational, educational and economic
characteristics
– implies certain inequalities

21. • Gender
– involves the psychological & sociocultural
dimensions of being female or male
– Sex refers to the biological dimension of being a
female or male

22. RESILIENCE, SOCIAL POLICY &
CHILDREN’s DEVELOPMENT

23. • Children who bounce back and/or triumph
over poverty becomes “Resilient”
• Social policy
– A government’s course of action designed to
promote the welfare of its citizens including
children.

24. DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSES
AND PERIODS

25. Biological, Cognitive &
Socio-emotional Processes
• Biological processes
– Produce changes in an
individual’s body
– Genes inherited from
parents, the
development of the
brain, height & weight
gains, motor skills &
hormonal changes of
puberty.

26. • Cognitive processes
– refers to changes in an
individual’s thought,
intelligence, & language
– Ex: putting together a
two-word sentence,
memorizing a poem,
solving a math problem
and imagining what it
would be like to be a
movie star

27. • Socio-emotional
processes
– involve changes in an
individual’s relationships
with other people,
changes in emotions, &
changes in personality