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Using at least two examples from the module materials in Block 1, explain what you think is interesting about this way of understanding childhood.
The child psychology perspective focuses on the mind and behavior of children from birth to adolescence, on how, when, and why children develop the way they do.
Some of the key aspects that contribute to the study of child psychology are:
- Cognitive development: This aspect of child psychology tries to understand how much children learn, how their brain grows and develops, how children to reason, and how they use that reasoning in certain situations.
- Environmental influences: How great of an influence is the environment a child lives and grows in? What comes first the development occurred within the individual or a child’s immediate social interactions? (An Introduction to childhood studies and child psychology, page 36).
- Socio- cultural and socio-economic context. The culture a child lives in, the customs, values, ways of living, and the relationships with peers and adults, families, and schools, have a great effect and influence on how a child develops throughout their life. There are also several different factors that contribute to how a child develops, such as how much education people they live with have, how much money, and what kind of job they do.
- Genetics: An important factor in child psychology that has pondered the minds of psychologists, philosophers, and scholars of different fields, is how much the genetic background has shaped a child’s life. The great debate of ‘nature vs nurture’ has put together almost all the researchers that agree that child development is a mix of both nature and nurture.
- Language: The ability of a child to communicate, express higher feelings, to make new relationships with peers, contributes greatly to the development of a child. It also is a solid building block for reading and writing when the child starts school.
- Research: Another key aspect of child psychology is Research. In trying to understand how a child learns, matures, and adapts, the psychologist has had to conduct research to develop methods that would help children reach their full potential. Whether the research has been experimental, non-experimental, methodological, or developmental, it has greatly advanced knowledge and has improved the lives of children worldwide.
I have found their theory of Vygotsky on language development really fascinating. By recognizing that language is primary in cognitive development (An Introduction to childhood studies and child psychology, page 38) Vygotsky concluded that language is a child’s means to communicate with the outside world and later in life a great asset of intellectual development.
Having had personal experiences in this field, I could see how the theory of Vygotsky worked; where the thought and language are two separate systems that join later in a child’s life, how the thought connects and transforms and become words. It has really enhanced my understanding of how language develops in a child’s life.
Another example that I have found interesting is the experiments with infants. It was fascinating to see how the advancement in technology has made it possible for researchers to develop new ways of conducting studies with infants. Especially for the first couple of years, I have always thought that babies are in the stage of being ‘selfish’ where they only ‘take’ but not being able to ‘give’. This experiment has shed new light on my own understanding of childhood, especially the first years of life. (564 words)
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