023522 Child Development

This subject focuses on knowing and understanding children, how they are alike and different, and how they change over time. These are important in helping teachers make appropriate educational decisions. It examines human development as it applies to primary-aged (5–12 yrs) children. The notion of childhood as a developmental phase and aspects of human change over time, including cognitive, biosocial and psychosocial, are considered. Current theories, reflective of the scholarly field, and their implications for practice in the primary school, are examined. Students engage in a program of professional reading, and in a range of class-based and field-based activities, that enable a critical consideration of selected theories of human development, and how they may inform teaching practice in the primary school.