Module 1 – Theories of Development (Weeks 1 & 2
Week 2
John Bowlby’s Attachment theory
John Bowlby’s Attachment theory is focused on the critical relationship and the bonds that exist between people’s particularly the long term relationship that included the relations between parent, child, and between romantic partners. John Bowlby was interested in the understanding of the separation anxiety and distress that often come when a child is separated from his or her primary caregivers. According to the earliest behavioral theories which suggested that attachment or what is perceived as it is just learned behavior. The theories suggest that attachment was merely a result of the feedings relationship that exist between a child and a caregiver. The child is likely to become attached from the fact that the caregiver offers protection and nourishment (Zhu, Chang, Cheng, Qi, Elhoumed, M. & Sudfeld, 2019).
In the view of John Bowlby, attachment is an emotional bond that exists between one person and another. He believed that the earliest bods that are formed by children with their caregivers have a considerably significant impact of influence in their lives. Besides, they also observed that attachments do serve as a means of keeping an infant close to the mothers and hence improving the overall survival chances of the child. The central proponent of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are often available and are responsive to an infant’s fundamental need allow the child to develop a greater sense of security. In such an instance, the infant do understand that the caregivers is dependable, and this create a secure base for the child to start exploring his or her environment freely.
Module two
Week 3
Heredity and reproduction
Heredity is the passing of genes from the parents to the offspring. The passing of genes to the next generation happens typically during the process of reproduction. This takes place both in animals and in plants the same. However, one element often assures others. The aspect of reproduction must, therefore, involve heredity. There exist a difference between these two aspects. Heredity is the hereditary transmission of the physical and the genetic qualities of the parents to their offspring or the young ones. According to the natural law Uda, Matsui, Tanaka, Uematsu, Miura, Kawana, & Noguchi (2015),, a by which living organisms both plants and animals tend to repeat their key characteristics is termed as heredity. However, reproduction, according is the act of giving birth or rise to a new individual in biological processes.
There exist three essential types of heredity, allele are the different forms of a gene, genetic variation such as the mutations are often responsible for the creation of allele. During the process of reproduction, recessive alleles are not expressed and or do no become visible. Heredity cannot take place without the process of reproduction. However, not every reproduction process guarantees the operation of heredity, especially for the recessive alleles, which are not often expressed in the process of reproduction. Very often, the process of reproduction considered a method of inheritance that makes it possible for an organism to pass its characteristics to the offspring. As such, the process of heredity is often facilitated by reproduction (Zhu, Chang, Cheng, Qi, Elhoumed, M. & Sudfeld, 2019).
Week 4
Prenatal development and its importance in human’s life
Prenatal development PD is termed as the development that takes place within the worm in which he single Cell Zygote, which is the cell formulated by the combination of sperm and an egg, becomes an embryo, a fetus, and then form a baby. The first two weeks of this development are always concerned with the multiplication of the cell. It is considered the process of human development as it relates to both the physical, cognitive, and psychological development. This lifespans development is often organized to various stages that are based on the age of the fetus. The prenatal development is considered the process that takes place during the 40 weeks before the death of a child and is often significantly influenced by genetics.
The common stages of prenatal development include the germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages. The prenatal event is also organized into the first-trimester need and the ends of embryonic stages. The second trimester ends at week 20 and the time the child’s birth. PD is critical in the overall wellbeing of the child as it influences the elements of a child’s development after birth. Since cognitive, physicals, and psychological aspects of evolution depend on the same. As a result, the overall growth and wellbeing of a child after delivery rely on the element of prenatal development to a greater extent. This is because fetal development also involves the development of the brain, which is critical in life after birth (Zhu, Chang, Cheng, Qi, Elhoumed, M. & Sudfeld, 2019).
Module 3 – Early Childhood (Weeks 5 & 6)
WEEK 5
Infancy refers to the early period of child development from the time of birth to two years old. It is believed the changes and experiences the child goes through during this stage determine the foundation of the child’s characters and behavior (Uda, Matsui, Tanaka, Uematsu, Miura, Kawana, & Noguchi, 2015). During this time, toddlers undergo dramatic changes as their brain starts to grow and comprehend language. As the mind goes through these milestones, the toddlers learn to reach and taste objects, try out new sounds, stretch on the couches and floor, and listen to their parents/caregivers.
Cognitive development is the learning process of infants as they grow and interact with their new environment. This process occurs differently for each kid, and factors such as genes and environment influence the events. At the age of two months, the toddler begins to recognize faces and reacts fussy to boredom. At six months, the child directs everything he/she touches to the mouth, looks around with curiosity, and reaches for stuff as the mobility phase begins (Arnett, Maynard, Brownlow, C., Chapin, & Machin, 2020). At the end of one year, the infant is so knowledgeable and starts to use gestures, points at things or pictures, and follows perfectly simple instructions such as throwing and handing over stuff.
Babies learn to communicate as their brains continue to develop to produce language spoken by the immediate family members. The process of learning a new word begins from hearing and seeing, to comprehension of the sight and sound. Babies start to create their music by mimicking the sounds of their caregivers and create their own to communicate.
Infants exhibit two types of emotions during their early childhood, attraction and withdrawal. They display affinity when they are pleased with situations that stimulate happiness and pleasure. As they interact with parents and caregivers, they feel loved, desired, and their needs are taken care of (Grossmann, 2015). When an infant exhibits withdrawal, the causes could be physical discomfort, sickness, or unpleasant food flavor. At two months, the baby expresses social smiling to those in the surrounding environment and also laughs as the mother acts playful around him/her.
WEEK 6: Introduction to preschool years
Preschool refers to the programs administered to children to impart them with skills necessary for schooling and interact in a social setting. Professionally trained teachers conduct these programs of early childhood care and education during this period of drastic growth and development (Lohndorf, Vermeer, Cárcamo, De la Harpe, & Mesman, 2019). Children enrolled in this program are mostly between the ages of two to five.
Cognitive development in preschool years occurs when their brains develop as they learn and explore new things. Children think about how to solve a particular problem and understand situations as they occur. Singing, reading, playing with toys, and talking to babies is essential in this stage of cognitive development (Hazlett, Gu, Munsell, Kim, Styner, Wolff & Collins, 2017). As the child becomes more and more curious, the caregivers in preschool should not assume the why questions that are asked continuously.
During early childhood in preschool, children begin to process and understand the language in a better way. At the age of 3, a child can remember at least 900 words. As the child grows to the age of six, the language becomes flourished, and the child speaks from 8,000 to 14,000 words. Apart from these vocabularies, children begin to understand how to use a different form of words, plural, irregular verbs, and so on.
The phase of social and emotional development occurs when children start to understand themselves and their feelings while interacting with people. During this period, children can form and upkeep relationships, engage and explore the environment, and express and manage their emotions. Parents are thus encouraged to participate children in a positive and quality interaction with their children by being affectionate, nurturing, and responsive.
Module 4 – Middle Childhood (Weeks 7 & 8)
WEEK 7: Introduction to middle childhood
This is the stage between the age of 6 and 12 years when the child becomes more flexible as they approach adolescence (Daniel, Benish‐Weisman, Sneddon & Lee, 2020). Children at this age begin to spend more time away from home as they explore the environment.
Motor skills are those that involve the muscles and are divided into fine and gross motor skills. Excellent motor skills include actions such as grasping, while gross motor skills include movements of the whole body parts. Children at this stage improve their motor skills and become more flexible, run very fast, and jump higher (Kogan, Muñoz. Ibáñez & García, 2020). Boys have been proved to develop these skills more quickly than girls except for hoping and skipping. Some children may experience slow development resulting in more stagnant thinking and reasoning (DelGiudice, 2018). The factors that affect development in middle age include trauma, learning disabilities, and other mental issues (Zhu, Chang, Cheng, Qi, Elhoumed, M. & Sudfeld, 2019).
Cognitive development
Between the ages of 5-6 years, the child begins to reason, and the family assigns roles and responsibilities. The children become capable of taking instructions from adults and being productive. According to history, children from many cultures are welcomed to adulthood and assist elders in specific roles. Their brain development enables them to memorize words and phrases, comprehend mathematics easily, and find solutions to problems.
Week 8:
- Literacy
At this stage, the child is conversant with the language, and attending school enables them to learn how to read. Most children can read by the age of seven, a skill that is both complicated and amazing. At the age of six, a child can write from observing prints in classrooms, homes, and around their environment. It is essential at this age to engage them in storytelling sessions as they grab words and scribble them down on paper. Classifying, sorting, and matching materials such as beads and other play items help them in developing literacy skills (Kogan, Muñoz. Ibáñez & García, 2020).
Children with difficulties in learning exhibit signs such as incorrect or awkward sentences, poor grammar, unable to explain concepts, incorrect spelling, and poor handwriting (Zhu, Chang, Cheng, Qi, Elhoumed, M. & Sudfeld, 2019). Difficulties in writing can go a long way in affecting a child’s future education if not treated as early as it has been realized. The parents can seek help from a pathologist who will assist in building this skill and target on the child’s strengths.
- Emotional-and-social-development
As children start to mature and interact with their peers, they develop relationships, both emotionally and physically (Beets, 2019). Peers’ friends include classmates, playmates, and friends of near-age. This group of people starts to play a prominent role in the child’s life during middle age than never before.
Children at this age display a type of reasoning referred to as pre-conventional moral reasoning. According to Piaget’s theory of child development, children under the age of 10 years view the world from other directions, such as teachers, parents, and leaders (Buttelmann & Karbach, 2017). Several factors influence a child’s moral development, such as their experiences with close relatives, friends, and adults, as well as the cognitive, social, and emotional skills acquired.
As kids develop through the middle age, their communication and cognitive skill are also produced, thus increasing their interpersonal awareness. Therefore, they become more responsive and emotional towards peers and friends and tend to understand others’ needs. They produce social skills that assist them in forming close friendships (Curtis, 2015).
During this stage, children start to identify themselves as boys or girls and consider certain activities/behaviors as masculine or feminine. This awareness increases with age determining how they act and think. For example, kids discover that boys are good at mechanics, sports, and mathematics, while girls are good at music and art. They also know that male is supposed to be reliable and competitive while the female is supposed to be affectionate and soft-spoken.
Module 5 – Adolescence (Weeks 9 & 10)
WEEKS 9
Brain Development in Adolescence
Brain development in adolescents occurs very rapidly between the ages of three to five years. By the time the child is nine years, all the structures of the brain are correctly formed, including the building blocks (Curtis, 2015). The human brain takes a long time to develop, and during adolescence stage of childhood, the prefrontal lobe of the brain is finally formed as the last part of brain development (Crone, & Konijn, 2018). During this period, teenagers respond well to rewards and accomplishments than to punishments, form clear boundaries, and acquire the ability to do things based on their judgment. For proper brain development, a safe and loving environment is paramount (Kogan, Muñoz. Ibáñez & García, 2020).
Weeks 10
Cross-Cultural Perspective of Adolescence
Research in cross-cultural perspective and development across different societies indicates that social adolescence occurs in a unique way across different cultures (Curtis, 2015). It has been noted that this extended youth period is linked to industrialization, formal education, and urbanization. (De Bolle, De Fruyt, McCrae, Löckenhoff, Costa Jr, Aguilar-Vafaie, & Avdeyeva, 2015) This universal stage of an adolescent may be problematic and stressful in some cultures, while in others, it is well managed by fundamental family values.
Module 6 – Adulthood and end of life (Weeks 11 – 12)
Weeks 11
Middle adulthood
Cognitive development, while most people tend to associate a cognitive decline with aging, aging does not necessarily mean that there is a decrease in the cognitive function. It has been established that tacit knowledge, verbal memory, vocabulary, inductive reasoning, and their firms of practical thought skills do become better with age. Adults in middle age witness continued cognitive developments, with many individuals becoming experts in a particular area of study and or occupation. Through the brains has already attained maturity, the demands of life do offer both the cognitive gains and losses in this stage of development. Middle adulthood do present unique challenges that peoples must often lean means of coping up to maintain health functioning or operations (Curtis, 2015).
As we tend to age into adulthood, the working memory or our individual’s ability to stores and use information becomes less efficient. The capacity to process information quickly tends to decrease with age. This slowing of the processing speed makes the age differences in many different cognitive tasks. Research has urged that inhibitory functioning or the ability to focus on a piece of particular information while suppressing the critical attention to less pertinent information, declines with age may explains the significant difference I the performance of vital cognitive tasks. However, few differences are often observed when memory cues are available; these included for recognition memory tasks or when individuals can draw upon acquired knowledge of even experiences. It has been confirmed that there are no discernible general cognitive declines that are often observed before the age of 60 years of age (Kogan, Muñoz. Ibáñez & García, 2020).
Week 12
Late Adulthood
Psychosocial development
For most peoples the late adulthood, psychosocial development often included activities that were parts of middle adulthood, such as work socializing and caring for self and care for others. As people age, they tend to experiences changes in their self-theories. Due to the many changes that do occur in one’s age, it is often essential for the late adult to preserve their self-concepts of which is the central theme in their individual’s theories or the self-theories. A person’s self-concept starts developing before the age of two and often proceeds throughout his or her entire lifespan. However, different life states do focus on the various aspects of self-concept. According to Erikson’s eight-stage if development, the self-theory integrity despair. According to him, integrity achievement does take place when individuals have few regrets about their lives and are comfortable with the person they are (Beets, 2019).
However, despair does arise when a person feels that they have missed or misused the opportunities that life presented them with and are dissatisfied with their lives. Often the common thread of attaining the integrity or the despair is the review of an individual’s life, which often results in a more completes the understanding of one’s past. In Responses, people may want to amend estranged kind of relationships and lingering kind of conflicts as well as sharing their past experiences with individuals around them. This may give way to the socio-emotional selective theory in which adults tend to chooses to prioritize and investing their time in meaningful kinds of relationships.
Module 7 – Diversities, Differences, Inclusivity, and Indigenous First Nations/Pacific Islands Frameworks and Theories (Week 13)
Week 13
Inclusion
Diversity is a range of human differences, and this includes not limited to the element of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age social classes, physical ability, or attributed religious and or ethical values systems, national origin, and political beliefs. Inclusion is involvements and empowerment, where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized. An inclusive promote and sustain a greater sense of belonging; it values and practices respect for the elements of talents, beliefs, background, and means of living members (Konijn et al., 2018).
Inclusions are a massive sense of belonging. It makes peoples feel a sense of belonging and value for precisely who they ate as an individual or as a group. Peoples fee a level of supportive energy and commitments from others so that they work to do their best at work. Inclusion often means a significant shift in an organization’s kind of mindset and cultures that has a visible type of impact, like participation in meetings and how offices are organized. The process of inclusion often engages each individual and often makes individuals feel values as being essentials to the success of a given organization. Significant evidence indicates that when people think benefits, they tend to function at full capacity and even feel part of the organization’s fundamental mission. This shift in culture does create a higher-performing organization where the element of motivation and the individual moral go higher (Beets, 2019).
References
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Curtis, A. C. (2015). Defining adolescence. Journal of Adolescent and Family Health, 7(2), 2.
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