MSCD Core Concentration: Child Development Specialist Degree

This course is designed to help students gain knowledge about diversity through an examination of social science research on child development, child rearing across cultures, and issues of equity, power, and privilege.

Among the variety of issues addressed in this course are strategies for developing and maintaining supportive relationships with children and families with a range of child-rearing practices, language differences, racial identities, cultural traditions, and economic vulnerabilities.

In addition, the course offers students opportunities for critical self-reflection about their cultural, racial, ethnic, sexual, and social class identities, and how to engage in responsive and reciprocal relationships with children, families, and communities different from themselves.

This course focuses on the study of social and emotional development in children from birth through age eight. It primarily considers how children experience themselves and others; the role of relationships in development; and the interaction of biological, psychological and social forces.

Throughout the course, culture is seen as shaping every aspect of human development, and is reflected in child-rearing beliefs and practices designed to promote healthy adaptation. Students are expected to acquire a working knowledge of the emotional and social domains of development through the integration of natural observation and use of media resources with relevant theory and research.

Other domains of development, including cognitive, linguistic and physical, will be discussed as they relate to social and emotional development.

This course is an examination of physical growth and development beginning with prenatal development and extending through eight years of age.

Areas of study will include the physical, neurological, motor, and sensory processes of maturation. Specifically, students will explore in depth the paths of typical development in these areas, and in addition will gain an entry level of understanding atypical patterns and events that lead to developmental disabilities and delays. General health, growth, nutrition, and wellness will be discussed as well the socio-cultural and socio-economic influences on these issues.

Students will gain an appreciation for the importance of health status and individual sensory profiles in children’s learning as well as the interrelationship of nutrition and physical movement in maintaining health and developmental progress. Strategies for observing neurobehavioral functioning in infants and children will be explored.