Child Development Courses
Theories of Development
Semester: Fall
“There’s nothing so practical as a good theory,” suggested Kurt Lewin almost a hundred years ago. Since then, the competing theoretical models of Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky, and others have shaped the field of developmental psychology and been used by parents and educators to determine child-care practice and education. In this course, we will study the classic theories — psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and cognitive-developmental — as they were originally formulated and in light of subsequent critiques and revisions. We will also consider new directions in theorizing development that respond to recent challenges from gender, cultural, and poststructuralist criticism. Questions we will consider include, Are there patterns in our emotional, thinking, or social lives that can be seen as universal or are these always culture-specific? Can life experiences be conceptualized in a series of stages? How else can we understand change over time? We will use theoretical perspectives as lenses through which to view different aspects of experience — the origins of wishes and desires, early parent-child attachments, intersubjectivity in the emergence of self, symbolic and imaginative thinking, and problem solving. For conference work, students will be encouraged to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or in another setting with children, as one goal of the course is to bridge theory and practice.
Social Development
Semester: Fall
Some of the most interesting and important pieces of knowledge a child will ever learn are not taught in school. So it is with the child’s social world. Unlike “reading, writing, and ’rithmetic,” there is no “Social Thinking 101.” Further, by the time children reach school age they have already spent years learning the “lessons of life” and affecting those around them. This course will explore the social world of the child from birth through adolescence, focusing on three main areas: parent-child relations, sex-role development, and moral development. Within parenting, we will examine such issues as different parenting “styles,” the long-term consequences of divorce, and the “hurrying” of children to achieve major milestones at ever-earlier ages. Within the topic of sex-role development, we will read about the role of powerful socialization forces, including the mass media, and the socialization pressures that children place on themselves and each other. Within moral development, we will study the growth of moral emotions such as empathy, shame, and guilt and the role of gender and culture in shaping our sense of right and wrong. Conference work may include field placement at the Early Childhood Center or other venues, as interactions with real children will be encouraged.
Personality Development
Semester: Fall
Sigmund Freud postulated a complex theory of the development of the person a century ago. While some aspects of his theory have come into question, many of the basic principles of psychoanalytic theory have become part of our common culture and worldview. This course will center on reading and discussion of the work of key contributors to psychoanalytic developmental theory since Freud. We will trace the evolution of what Pine has called the “four psychologies of psychoanalysis” — drive, ego, object, and self-psychologies — and consider the issues they raise about children’s development into individuals with unique personalities within broad, shared developmental patterns in a given culture. Readings will include the work of Anna Freud, Erik Erikson, Margaret Mahler, Daniel Stern, Steven Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, and George Vaillant. Throughout the semester, we will return to such fundamental themes as the complex interaction of nature and nurture, the unanswered questions about the development of personal style, and the cultural dimensions of personality development. Fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or other appropriate setting is required, although conference projects may center on aspects of that experience or not, depending on the individual student’s interest.
Art and Visual Perception
Semester: Fall
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” — John Berger
Psychologists have long been interested in measuring and explaining the phenomena of visual perception. In this course, we will study and reproduce some of the experimental investigations of seeing and the theoretical positions they support. Our journey will begin with the myriad of visual illusions that have intrigued psychologists and physiologists since the late nineteenth century. We will engage in hands-on exploration of these visual illusions and create our own versions of eye-and-brain tricking images. We will also identify their use in works of visual art from a range of periods. The next stop on our psychological travels will be the apparent motion effects that captured the attention of Gestalt psychologists. We will explore the connections between the distinctive theoretical approach of the Gestaltists and the contemporaneous Bauhaus movement in art, design, and architecture. We will then move on to a consideration of the representation of visual space: in the company of contemporary psychologist Michael Morgan, we will ask how the three-dimensional world is represented in “the space between our ears.” In this section of the course, we will create three-dimensional stereoscopic and kinetic images and explore their artistic uses. The spatial exploration section will also give us the opportunity to study the artistic development and use of perspective in two-dimensional images. Throughout our visual journey, we will seek connections between perceptual phenomena and what is known about the brain processing of visual information. This is a course for people who enjoy reflecting on why we see things as we do. It should hold particular interest for students of film and the visual arts who are curious about scientific explanations of the phenomena that they explore in their art.
Intersections of Identity and Context: Race and Sexuality
Semester: Fall
What is the connection between race, sexuality, and gender within an American, multicultural, and multiethnic society? Is there a coherent, distinct, and continuous self existing within our post- (-modern, -paradigmatic, -etc.) contexts? How is the sexual/racial/gendered implicated in the creation of this self-identity? Is there principled dynamic/developmental change in our concepts of self, whether as human beings, sexual beings, and/or racial/ethnic beings? I see this class as an exploration of all these questions. We will read selections from social, developmental, and critical psychology, social anthropology, sexuality research, queer theory, and history, among other fields, in order to analyze the relationship between society, culture, and the self in the domains of race, sexuality, and gender. This class is intended for students of ethnicity, sexuality, or gender from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students will need previous coursework in psychology or in a class focused on ethnicity, sexuality, or gender.
Bullies and Their Victims: Social and Physical Aggression in Childhood and Adolescence
Semester: Spring
It can be the bane of our existence in childhood: the bully who simply will not leave us alone. Until fairly recently, the image that came to mind, in both the popular imagination and the world of psychological study, was that of a physically imposing and physically aggressive boy, someone who found the littlest, most defenseless, boy to target. In recent years, however, that image has begun to change. Now we realize that the ability to harm a person’s social relationships and social “standing” — usually through the manipulation of others — can be every bit as devastating to the victim. And in this new world of social aggression, girls’ expertise has come to the fore. In this course, we will study the nature of bullies and victims, in both the physical and social sense, and the possible long-term consequences of such bullying, for both the perpetrator and the targeted. We will explore recent evidence that bullying and victimization even begin in the preschool years, far earlier than previously thought, and we will examine some modern approaches used to break this vicious cycle, such as peer programs and interpersonal problem solving. Conference work may include field placement at the Early Childhood Center or other venues, as interactions with real children will be encouraged.
Pathways of Development: Psychopathology and Other Challenges to the Developmental Process
Semester: Spring
This course addresses the multiple factors that play a role in shaping a child’s development. Starting with a consideration of what the terms “normality” and “pathology” may refer to in our culture, we will read about and discuss a variety of situations that illustrate different interactions of inborn, environmental, and experiential influences on developing lives. For example, we will read theory and case material addressing congenital conditions such as deafness and life events such as acute trauma and abuse, as well as the range of less clear-cut circumstances and complex interactions of variables that have impact on growth and adaptation. We will examine a number of the current conversations and controversies about assessment, diagnosis/labeling, early intervention, use of psychoactive medications, and treatment modalities. Students will be required to engage in fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or elsewhere and may choose to focus conference projects on aspects of that experience.
Children’s Literature: Developmental and Literary Perspectives
Charlotte L. Doyle, Sara Wilford
Semester: Spring
Children’s books are an important bridge between adults and the world of children. In this course we will ask such questions as, What are the purposes of literature for children? What makes a children’s book developmentally appropriate for a child of a particular age? What is important to children as they read or listen? How do children become readers? How can children’s books portray the uniqueness of a particular culture or subculture, allowing those within to see their experience reflected in books and those outside to gain insight into the lives of others? To what extent can books transcend the particularities of a given period and place? Course readings include writings about child development, works about children’s literature, and, most centrally, children’s books themselves — picture books, fairy tales, and novels for children. Class emphasis will be on books for children up to the age of about 12. Among our children’s book authors will be Margaret Wise Brown, C. S. Lewis, Katherine Paterson, Maurice Sendak, Mildred Taylor, E. B. White, and Vera B. Williams. Many different kinds of conference projects are appropriate for this course. For example, in past years, students have worked with children (and their books) in fieldwork and service learning settings, written original work for children (sometimes illustrating it as well), traced a theme in children’s books, explored children’s books that illuminate particular racial or ethnic experiences, or examined books that capture the challenge of various disabilities.
Cognition, Language, and Consciousness: An Introduction to Developmental Cognitive Science
Semester: Fall
Do lemurs see red? Do you? What about newborns? Do you really have déjà vu? Does listening to Mozart in the womb really make children more intelligent? What about Metallica? What is intelligence, anyway? Why are phone numbers seven digits long? And why do children learn language better from an adult in person than the same adult on television? In this course, we will attempt to answer all of these questions and many more about how we process visual and auditory information, first put things in categories, solve simple and complex problems, communicate with each other and with our pets, and remember how to ride a bicycle and how to get to New York City. To answer these questions, we will read and discuss both theory and research in developmental psychology, psychobiology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy on various aspects of cognitive development across the life span in different cultural contexts, focusing on infancy, childhood, and adolescence. We will also discuss both the usefulness and the limitations of this research in light of the populations studied and the methodologies employed. Topics will include perception, categorization, reasoning, theory of mind and autism, language and thought, multilingualism and second-language acquisition, social cognition, memory, metacognition and metamemory, and competence in context. Conference work will provide the opportunity for students to focus on a particular aspect of cognitive development across the life span in greater detail. This may include fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or in another setting with children.