Observing and Analyzing Child Development
Part 1:
Describe the developmental characteristics you observe of a child, or children, between birth and 2 and ages 3 and 5.
Part 2:
Give An overview of each developmental domain and provide the interrelationship between each domain:
● Social-emotional
● Cognitive
● Language
● Physical
● description of the interrelationship between developmental domains
Part 3:
Give a summary that responds to the following questions:
1. How will learning about childhood development complement your future as an educator?
2. What questions can arise from observing children playing?
3. What concerns do you have related to observing child play and early childhood settings?
Sample Solution
The domains of child development and early learning are discussed in different terms and categorized in different ways in the various fields and disciplines that are involved in research, practice, and policy related to children from birth through age 8. Studies of early cognitive development have led researchers to understand the developing mind as astonishingly competent, active, and insightful from a very early age. For example, infants engage in an intuitive analysis of the statistical regularities in the speech sounds they hear en route to constructing language (Saffran, 2003). Infants and toddlers derive implicit theories to explain the actions of objects and the behavior of people; these theories form the foundation for causal learning and more sophisticated understanding of the physical and social worlds. Infants and young children also are keenly responsive to what they can learn from the actions and words directed to them by other people. This capacity for joint attention may be the foundation that enables humans to benefit from culturally transmitted knowledge (Tomasello et al., 2005).
