The Development of Children Study Guide


Book Description

This detailed study guide helps students to understand and retain the text material at a higher level than they are likely to achieve by reading the text alone. Each chapter includes a variety of practice tests and exercises to help integrate themes that reappear in various chapters. Each chapter also includes a review of key concepts, guided study questions, and section reviews.




The Development of Children


Book Description

The Development of Children has long been acclaimed for its authoritative chronological exploration of how the lives of children are shaped by biological and cultural factors. In this thoroughly updated new edition, lead author Cynthia Lightfoot builds on the legacy of original authors Michael and Sheila Cole, offering a lively, engaging, and always accessible examination of child development as a process involving the whole child within multiple, mutually influencing contexts. Throughout, the emphasis is on how the interaction of biology and culture contributes both to the universal pathways of development shared by all children and to the diverse developmental patterns that unfold in the lives of individual children.




Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8


Book Description

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.




The Development of Children


Book Description

Development is best understood as a fusion of biological, social, and psychological processes interacting in the unique medium of human culture. [In this text, the authors] have tried to show not only the role of each of these factors considered separately but also how they interact in diverse cultural contexts to create whole, unique human beings.-Pref.




The Development of Children Study Guide


Book Description

This detailed study guide helps students to understand and retain the material in 'The Development of Children' at an even higher level than by reading the text alone. Each chapter includes practice tests and exercises, key concept reviews, guided study questions and section reviews.




Child Development, Second Edition


Book Description

Now in a revised and expanded second edition, this indispensable clinical resource and text helps readers understand the latest developmental knowledge and apply it in their work with children and families. The book begins with a framework elucidating the transactions between individual development and the child's wider environment, and emphasizing the crucial role of attachment. Key developmental processes and tasks from infancy through middle childhood are then discussed in paired chapters that respectively address how children of different ages typically feel, think, and behave, and how to intervene effectively with those who are having difficulties. Ideally structured for classroom use, the second edition has been updated throughout to reflect current research, practice advances, and policy issues. Included are an important new chapter on the developing brain and expanded coverage of applications for child care and school settings.




Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development


Book Description

Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development provides a new perspective on the study of childhood and family life. Successful development is enhanced when communities provide meaningful life pathways that children can seek out and engage. Successful pathways include both a culturally valued direction for development and competence in skills that matter for a child's subsequent success as a person as well as a student, parent, worker, or citizen. To understand successful pathways requires a mix of qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic methods—the state of the art for research practice among developmentalists, educators, and policymakers alike. This volume includes new studies of minority and immigrant families, school achievement, culture, race and gender, poverty, identity, and experiments and interventions meant to improve family and child contexts. Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development will be of enormous value to everyone interested in the issues of human development, education, and social welfare, and among professionals charged with the task of improving the lives of children in our communities.




Child Development


Book Description

Now in a revised and updated fourth edition, this trusted text and professional resource provides a developmental framework for clinical practice. The authors examine how children's trajectories are shaped by transactions among family relationships, brain development, and the social environment. Risk and resilience factors in each of these domains are highlighted. Covering infancy, toddlerhood, the preschool years, and middle childhood, the text explores how children of different ages typically behave, think, and relate to others. Developmentally informed approaches to assessment and intervention are illustrated by vivid case examples. Observation exercises and quick-reference summaries of each developmental stage facilitate learning. New to This Edition *Incorporates a decade's worth of advances in knowledge about attachment, neurodevelopment, developmental psychopathology, intervention science, and more. *Toddler, preschool, and school-age development are each covered in two succinct chapters rather than one, making the book more student friendly. *Updated throughout by new coauthor Michael F. Troy, while retaining Douglas Davies's conceptual lens and engaging style.




The Educator's Center Guide to Understanding Child Development


Book Description

Educators and parents alike recognize that children don't grow up simply by adding inches and pounds--child development is a much richer mix of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional growth. Though children make progress at their own pace, educators can help them on their individual paths. Understanding the many ways in which children grow forms the essence of good teaching. If you appreciate the ebbs and flows of development, you can teach children with more insight and confidence, and offer support and guidance to their parents and caregivers. Problems can arise, of course, in every child's life. Dr. Mayes's reassuring approach helps educators understand the nature of a problem, how they can address it, and when and where to go for help with concerns such as learning disabilities, bullying, sibling rivalry, depression, anger, and other difficult feelings. This guide will be an incredible resource on every educator's bookshelf.




Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.