Child Psychology
Distance Learning Course of 20 Lessons
Course Description
This in-depth course in Child Psychology will provide you with an amazing insight into the development of children and will help you understand the things and situations that can affect how a child behaves.
About Child Psychology
Whether you are a parent or work within the childcare profession this course will provide you with the skills and knowledge to help a child to reach his or her maximum potential. The course has been designed for some one without any prior knowledge of the subject and will allow the student to study the course at their own pace in their own home.
Tuition & Fees
995.00 CAD
Child Psychology Module One Major Developmental Issues
Unit One: The First Year of Life
- Infant reflexes; Social development during the first year of life including the social smile and onset of fear of strangers.
Unit Two: The Formation of Attachments
- Imprinting; Attachment (Bowlby) including cross-cultural studies; Harlow and surrogate mothers; Relevance of animal studies in child development.
Unit Three: Consequences of Breakdowns in Attachments
- Maternal deprivation; Implications of theories of attachment and maternal deprivation when placing children with surrogates.
Unit Four: The Home, Family and School
- Group vs family care and studies of effects of maternal employment and father absent families; Importance of peers and siblings.
Unit Five: Basic Principles of Research Methods
- Nature and purpose of research, what is an experiment, supporting and refuting hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, control of variables, standardised instructions and procedures, methods of sampling, design of investigations.
Unit Six: The Development of Visual Perception
- Introduction to the nature/nurture debate on visual perception; Fantz – form perception; Gibson and Walk – depth perception; how the physiology of the human visual system helps us judge depth and distance; Bower – size constancy; animal experiments on early sensory deprivation.
Unit Seven: The Development of Language and Communication
- Development of non-verbal communication in humans, gestures etc; comparisons with non-human primates; outline of language development in humans; including naturalistic observational in humans; including naturalistic observational studies and criticisms of these; Innate and reinforcement theories.
Unit Eight: Intelligence and Intelligence Testing
- Definitions of intelligence; mental age and IQ; Tests of intelligence; Advantages and disadvantages of IQ testing.
Unit Nine: The Nature/Nurture Debate in the Study of Intelligence
- Twins studies; stability of IQ; Are early experiences decisive for later development?
Unit Ten: Data Collection and Interpretation
- Tables and histograms, correlation and scattergrams; Mean; Range; Drawing conclusions from data.
Child Psychology Module Two The Child as an Individual
Unit Eleven: How Children Think
- Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; including studies of egocentrism and criticisms of his work.
Unit Twelve: Learning Theory – How Behaviour is Acquired
- Learning and conditioning – classical conditioning and operant conditioning; including explanations of extinction, discrimination and generalisation; positive and negative reinforcement; Social Learning Theory and criticisms.
Unit Thirteen: Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory – An Alternative Approach
- Personality structure, 5 stage theory, criticisms.
Unit Fourteen: Moral Development
- Definition in psychological terms; investigation of moral behaviour, moral feelings and moral judgement.
Unit Fifteen: The Development of Gender Roles
- Sex-typing; Gender identity; Biological, social and cultural theories.
Unit Sixteen: Aggression in Children
- Biological basis of aggression; Psychological theory and aggression; Aggression as a learned response;
Imitation of aggression; viewing violence; Punishment for aggression; sex differences in aggression.
Unit Seventeen: Methods Used in Child Development Research
- Observational, Survey, Correlational, Experimental – advantages and disadvantages.
Unit Eighteen: Play
- The importance of play to learning;
Piaget’s theory of play; forms of play;
Relevance of psychological theories to pre-school education;Play and learning in nursery schools; Play therapy.
Unit Nineteen: Learning in School
- Programmed learning and its relationship to learning theory – advantages and disadvantages; Discovery learning and its effectiveness.
Unit Twenty: Behaviour Modification
- Explanation and examples; Relationship to learning theory; Points systems, Advantages and disadvantages.
Child Psychology Certificate of Completion issued by eLearn Canada college.
With this course you will have unlimited access to your own personal tutor who specialises in their field of study. It is your personal tutor’s role to ensure that you receive constructive feedback and to deal with any queries you may have. You are more than welcome to telephone, fax or email your personal tutor.
You will also have access to a dedicated and friendly team of administrators and course advisors who offer sound and professional guidance and advice when you need it. This ensures that you will never feel neglected and that you will always succeed!
Assessment Method
After each lesson there will be a question paper, which needs to be completed and submitted to your personal tutor for marking. This method of continual assessment ensures that your personal tutor can consistently monitor your progress and provide you with assistance throughout the duration of the course.
This course is an online course. With online study you have access to your entire course from the start of your studies. You can access your course materials, and submit all of your question papers to your personal tutor, online from anywhere in the World using your unique student account.
Study Hours
This is only an approximate figure and is dependent upon how much time you can dedicate to your studies and how well you grasp the learning concepts in the course material. Furthermore, at the end of each lesson there is a question paper that needs to be completed and returned to your tutor. You should allow at least 1 – 2 hours of study to complete each question paper. The approximate amount of time required to complete the course is: 200 hrs.
Requirements
There is no experience or previous qualifications required for enrollment on this course. It is available to all students, of all academic backgrounds.