PSYC 250 1st EditionExam # 1 Study Guide Lectures: 1 - 8Chapter 1 (Lecture 1 and 2)Preview: Why study Children?-Whatever your reasons, you will discover that the study of child development is provocative, intriguing, and informative-In Chapter 1, we will: explore historical views and the modern study for child development, consider why caring for children is so important, examine the nature of development, outline how science helps us to understand itII. Caring for Children:- Development o Is the pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life spano Most development involves growth, although it also includes decline - Improving the lives of childreno Health and well-being Today, health professionals recognize the power of lifestyles and psychological states  Clinical psychologists are among the health professionals who help people improve their well-being o Education There is widespread agreement that something needs to be done to improve the education of our nations children Are U.S schools teaching children to be immoral? Are U.S schools failing to teach children to read, write, and calculate adequately?  Should there be more accountability of student learning and teaching assessed by formal tests?  Should schools challenge students more?  Should schools focus only on developing the child’s cognitive skills? Should schools pay more attention to the child’s socioeconomic and physical development? o Sociocultural Contexts and diversity  Health and well-being, parenting and education-like development itself-are all shaped by their sociocultural context The term context refers to settings in which development occurs. These settings are influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors.Four contexts we pay special attention to in this text are: culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender. o Culture Behavior patterns and beliefs passed on from generation to generation Results from interaction of people over many years A cultural group can be as large as the U.S or as small as an isolated town The groups culture influences behavior of its members o Parenting  Can two gay men raise a healthy family? Are children harmed if both parents work outside the home? Does spanking have negative consequences for a child’s development? How damaging is divorce to children’s development?  Good parenting takes considerable time Understanding the nature of children’s development can help one become a better parent Many parents learn parenting practices from their parents: both desirableand undesirable practices are usually perpetuated o Cross cultural studies Compare aspects of two or more cultures Provides info about degree to which development is similar, or universal across cultures, or is instead culture specific o Ethnicity  The word ethnic comes from the Greek word “nation” Rooted in cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language  Diversity exists within each ethnic group Contrary to stereo type, not all African americans live in low-income circumstances; Not all latinos are Catholics; Not all Asian Americans are high school math whizzes o Socioeconomic status (SES) Refers to a person’s position within society based on occupational, educational, and economic characteristics Socioeconomic status implies certain inequalities  Generally, members of a society have- 1: occupations that vary in prestige, with some individuals having more access than others to higher-status occupations;- 2: different levels of educational attainment, with some individuals having more access than others to better education;- 3: different economic resources: and - 4: different levels of power to influence a community’s institutions- these differences in the ability to control resources to participate in society’s rewards produce unequal opportunities o Gender Refers to the characteristics of people as males and females Few aspects of our development are more central to our identitiy and social relationships than gender How you view yourself, your relationships with other people, your life, and your goals are shaped to a great extent by whether you are male or female and how your culture defines the proper roles of males and females In the U.S, the sociocultural context has become increasingly diverse in recent years. - Gender, Families, and Children’s developmento Around the world, the experiences of female children and adolescents continue to be quite different from those of maleso A higher percentage of girls than boys around the world have never had any educationo The fewest families being educated are in Africa o Canada, the U.S, and Russia have the highest percentage of educated women o In developing countries, 67% of women over the age of 25 have never been to schoolo At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 80 million more boys than girls were in primary and secondary educational settings around the worldo In many countries, adolescent females have less freedom to pursue a variety of careers and engage in various leisure acts than maleso Gender differences in sexual expression are widespread, especially in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Arab countries, where there are far more restrictions on the sexual activity of adolescent females than maleso In may countries females still experience considerable discrimination, and much work is needed to bridge the gap between the rights of males and females - Resilience, Social Policy, and Children’s developmento Some children are confident in their abilities despite negative stereotypes about their gender or their ethnic groupo Some children triumph over poverty and other adversities o Social policy-a government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare ofits citizenso Policy agenda is influenced by Values held by citizens and elected officials The nation’s economic strengths and weakness’s  Partisan politics o One study also revealed that the more years children spent living in poverty, the higher were their physiological indices of stress- Improving Family Policyo In the U.S, the national, state, and city governments all play a role in influencing the well-being of childreno Minnesota Family Investment Program Designed to influence the behavior of adults-to move adults off welfare and into paid employments Guaranteed that