Unit One: The First Year of Life
- Infant reflexes; Social development during the first year of life including the social smile and onset of fear of strangers.
Unit Two: The Formation of Attachments
- Imprinting; Attachment (Bowlby) including cross-cultural studies; Harlow and surrogate mothers; Relevance of animal studies in child development.
Unit Three: Consequences of Breakdowns in Attachments
- Maternal deprivation; Implications of theories of attachment and maternal deprivation when placing children with surrogates.
Unit Four: The Home, Family and School
- Group vs family care and studies of effects of maternal employment and father absent families; Importance of peers and siblings.
Unit Five: Basic Principles of Research Methods
Nature and purpose of research, what is an experiment, supporting and refuting hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, control of variables, standardised instructions and procedures, methods of sampling, design of investigations.
Unit Six: The Development of Visual Perception
Unit Seven: The Development of Language and Communication
- Development of non-verbal communication in humans, gestures etc; comparisons with non-human primates; outline of language development in humans; including naturalistic observational in humans; including naturalistic observational studies and criticisms of these; Innate and reinforcement theories.
Unit Eight: Intelligence and Intelligence Testing
- Definitions of intelligence; mental age and IQ; Tests of intelligence; Advantages and disadvantages of IQ testing.
Unit Nine: The Nature/Nurture Debate in the Study of Intelligence
- Twins studies; stability of IQ; Are early experiences decisive for later development?
Unit Ten: Data Collection and Interpretation
- Tables and histograms, correlation and scattergrams; Mean; Range; Drawing conclusions from data.
Module Two The Child as an Individual
Unit Eleven: How Children Think
- Piaget's theory of cognitive development; including studies of egocentrism and criticisms of his work.
Unit Twelve: Learning Theory - How Behaviour is Acquired
- Learning and conditioning - classical conditioning and operant conditioning; including explanations of extinction, discrimination and generalisation; positive and negative reinforcement; Social Learning Theory and criticisms.
Unit Thirteen: Freud's Psychodynamic Theory - An Alternative Approach
- Personality structure, 5 stage theory, criticisms.
Unit Fourteen: Moral Development
- Definition in psychological terms; investigation of moral behaviour, moral feelings and moral judgement.
Unit Fifteen: The Development of Gender Roles
- Sex-typing; Gender identity; Biological, social and cultural theories.
Unit Sixteen: Aggression in Children
- Biological basis of aggression; Psychological theory and aggression; Aggression as a learned response;
Imitation of aggression; viewing violence; Punishment for aggression; sex differences in aggression.
Unit Seventeen: Methods Used in Child Development Research
- Observational, Survey, Correlational, Experimental - advantages and disadvantages.
Unit Eighteen: Play
- The importance of play to learning;
Piaget's theory of play; forms of play;
Relevance of psychological theories to pre-school education;Play and learning in nursery schools; Play therapy.
Unit Nineteen: Learning in School
- Programmed learning and its relationship to learning theory - advantages and disadvantages; Discovery learning and its effectiveness.
Unit Twenty: Behaviour Modification
- Explanation and examples; Relationship to learning theory; Points systems, Advantages and disadvantages.
What are the career opportunities and salary potential when working in this field?
When giving our students careers advice, we like to leave it to the experts. Visit www.s1jobs.com and see for yourself. You will find thousands of national employment opportunities at your fingertips, giving you relevant and up to date information. By visiting them you will get the real facts.
Can you send me this info in the post?
Unfortunately not, we list all our course details online including fees, duration and syllabus. By doing this we are able to keep our fees to a minimum. Please contact us if you have further questions.
Can I pay the course fees in instalments?
Yes no problem at all. We have a plan which allows you to pay half upon enrolment and half next month. Payment plans can only be arranged by calling FREE on 0800 0131030. All payment plans incur a £15.00 admin charge.
What if I receive my course and it’s not suitable?
We offer a seven day money back guarantee on this course. If for any reason you are not happy please return it to our office within seven days of receipt and we will refund your money. Please be aware all courses require a signature upon receipt. The seven day period starts from the date it is signed for. No refunds are given after seven days whatever the circumstances. Money back guarantee excludes postage costs. It is also the student’s responsibility to cover return postage costs. All returns must be sent recorded delivery to our trading address shown on the contact us page.
