Prepared by: Leila M.

Collantes
E-mail Address: [email protected]

Central Luzon State University

Science City of Muñoz 3120
Nueva Ecija, Philippines

Instructional Module for the Course

SED 2100- The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles

Module 1 : Basic Concepts in Child Growth

and Development

Overview

In this module, you will have a thorough understanding of the

basic concepts on human being growth and development as well as their
characteristics and nature. You will identify the different life span
development of a human being as well as it challenges for each stage,
the domains of development and the different factors that influence
them.
You are expected to define in your own words the basic concepts
of child growth and development and explain the different periods as
well as the basic factors that influence growth and development of a
learner that makes him/her different from another person.
This would also account the impacts of development of the child
in which social considerations changed.
 SED 2100 The Child and Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

I. Objectives

After studying this module, the student should be able to:

1. Explain and give the meaning of child, growth, development, nature,

nurture, human development and developmental processes.
2. Discuss the difference of child development to adolescent development
3. Evaluate the reciprocal impacts between genes and the environment and
the nature vs. nurture debate
4. Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative changes and give
example of each
5. Name the different periods in the life span and describe the
developmental tasks for each stage.
6. Identify the three domains of development and cite an examples how they
are interrelated to one another.
7. Cite examples of the influences of social and historical context on the
development of a human being.
8. Explain how current research and theories on child and adolescent
development contribute to teaching and learning within and across different
areas.

Discussion

A. DEFINITION OF CHILD ADOLESCENCE LEARNERS

Biologically, a child (plural: children) is a human being between the stages

of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and
puberty. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, otherwise
known as a person younger than the age of majority.

Below are the following definitions for child according to:

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 SED 2100 The Child and Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

WHO - World Health Organization defines a child as a person 19 years or

younger unless national law defines a person to be an adult at an earlier age.
However, in these guidelines when a person falls into the 10 to 19 age category
they are referred to as an adolescent (see adolescent definition below).
Adolescence is frequently defined by several UN agencies as ranging from
10 to 19 years of age, which more accurately encapsulates the lower and upper
secondary levels of education (UNESCO, 2009b; UNICEF, 2002; WHO, 2009).
As children up to the age of 18, most adolescents are protected under the
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In US, adolescent ages between 12 and 14 and ends at 19 or 20. Philippines
consider those aged 15-24 years as young adult and those aged 15-19 years
as adolescents.

UNICEF –According to UNICEF, a child is any person under the age of

18, or a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years
unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.
Childhood is the time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong
and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended
community of caring adults. It is a precious time in which children should live
free from fear, safe from violence and protected from abuse and exploitation.
It refers to the state and condition of a child’s life, to the quality of those years.

UNESCO – A child means every human being below the age of eighteen
years unless under the law applicable to the child .Early childhood, defined as
the period from birth to eight years old, is a time of remarkable growth with
brain development at its peak. During this stage, children are highly
influenced by the environment and the people that surround them, stated by
UNESCO.

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 SED 2100 The Child and Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

In general, for the first year after birth, a baby is called an infant.
Early childhood begins at age two, when a child may be referred to as a
toddler. Childhood continues until adolescence, which generally coincides with
the teen years. Adolescence is the period of transition into adulthood.

B. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Growth – refers to quantitative changes in an individual as he progresses

in chronological age. It may refer to increases in size, height, or weight.
• refers to physical increase in the size of the body. (Increase in weight,
height, etc.)
• There is a change in form and increase in the complexity of body parts and
their functioning, thinking abilities and social skills.
• Growth is only one aspect of the larger process of development.

Development – refers to the progressive series of changes of an orderly

and coherent type leading to the individual’s maturation. This definition
implies that for development to be progressive, there is a direction in the
manner in which changes occur.
Development is also coherent, essentially because the sequence of
changes that occur are related to each other and do not occur haphazardly
or abruptly.
It is the changes in a person’s physical and behavioral traits that
emerge in orderly ways and last for a reasonable period of time. The
changes could be:
• PROGRESSIVE (results in acquisition of skills and abilities that are complex,
finer and more efficient)
• IN ORDER (there is an order in development.)
• LONG LASTING

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Growth and development are influenced by maturational, environmental

and genetic factors. All humans follow the same pattern of growth and
development. There are sequences in growth and development that even
individual differences cannot changes. The sequence is predictable although the
time of onset, the length of each stage, and the effects of each stage vary from
one person to another. Learning can either help or hinder the maturation process,
depending on what is learned.

Basic Concepts in Child Development

Human Development – is the pattern of movement or change that

begins at conception and continues through the life span. Development includes
growth and decline. This means that development can be positive or negative
(Santrock, 2002).

Child development - refers to the biological and psychological and

emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of
adolescence then through adulthood, as the individual progresses from
dependency to increasing autonomy.
Child development or child and adolescent development refer to the
process of growth and maturation of the human individual from conception to
adulthood. In many cultures, the care of children is shared among a wider
group of adults, and often older children, than is common in western societies.
The emotional, social and physical development of young children has a
direct effect on their overall development and on the adult they will become.
That is why understanding the need to invest in very young children is
so important, so as to maximize their future well-being.
Childhood - refers to the time or state of being a child, the early stage in
the existence or development of something. It connotes time of innocence,
where one is free from responsibility but vulnerable to forces in his environment.

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It is the time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong and
confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended
community of caring adults. It is a precious time in which children should live
free from fear, safe from violence and protected from abuse and exploitation.

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Nature versus Nurture

Nature (Heredity) – inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the

biological parents.

Nurture (Environment) – the world outside the self-beginning in the womb

and the learning that comes from experience. The totality of nonhereditary or
experiential influence on development.

Developmental psychology seeks to understand the influence of genetics

(nature) and environment (nurture) on human development. A significant issue in
developmental psychology has been the relationship between the innateness of an
attribute (whether it is part of our nature) and the environmental effects on that
attribute (whether it is derived from or influenced by our environment, or nurture).
Environmental inputs can affect the expression of genes, a relationship called
gene-environment interaction. An individual’s genes and their environment work
together, communicating back and forth to create traits. This is often referred to
as the nature vs. nurture debate, or nativism vs. empiricism.
A nativist (“nature”) account of development would argue that the
processes in question are innate and influenced by an organism’s genes. Natural
human behavior is seen as the result of already-present biological factors, such as
genetic code.
An empiricist (“nurture”) perspective would argue that these processes are
acquired through interaction with the environment. Nurtured human behavior is

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 SED 2100 The Child and Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

seen as the result of environmental interaction, which can provoke changes in

brain structure and chemistry. For example, situations of extreme stress can cause
problems like depression.
We are all born with specific genetic traits inherited from our parents, such
as eye color, height, and certain personality traits. Beyond our basic genotype,
however, there is a deep interaction between our genes and our environment: our
unique experiences in our environment influence whether and how particular traits
are expressed, and at the same time, our genes influence how we interact with
our environment (Diamond, 2009; Lobo, 2008). There is a reciprocal interaction
between nature and nurture as they both shape who we become, but the debate
continues as to the relative contributions of each.
Some concrete behavioral traits are dependent upon one’s environment, home, or
culture, such as the language one speaks, the religion one practices, and the
political party one supports. However, some traits which reflect underlying talents
and temperaments—such as how proficient at a language, how religious, or how
liberal or conservative—can be partially heritable.

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Developmental Processes

1. Quantitative Change- is a change in number or amount, such as growth or

loss in height, weight, gains in vocabulary, or an increase or decrease in
frequency of aggressive behavior or social interaction.

2. Qualitative Change – is a change in kind, structure or organization. It is

marked by the emergence of new phenomena that cannot easily be anticipated
on the basis of earlier functioning.

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C. PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT

Think about the life span and make a list of what you would consider the periods
of development. How many stages are on your list? Perhaps you have three:
childhood, adulthood, and old age. Or maybe four: infancy, childhood,
adolescence, and adulthood. The human life span has been divided into the
stages of

1. Prenatal period

The first developmental stage, in this period conception occurs by normal

fertilization or other means. This is where development begins.
The genetic endowment interacts with environmental influences from the
start. Basic body structures and organs form: brain growth spurt begins. Physical
growth is the most rapid in the life span. Vulnerability to environmental influences
is great.

2. Infancy and Toddlerhood

The infancy period, birth to 24 months (2 years of age), is a period of “firsts”

– first tooth, first steps, first words. During this period, infants move from
babyhood to first forms of personhood; personalities become clearer, more stable,
and more individual.
The first two years of life are filled with progressively refined development
in physical, motor, and manipulative skills. The baby’s brain is being “soft-wired”
by the environment and is highly dependent on caregivers providing windows of
opportunities from its development. We have a sensorimotor, highly action-
oriented thinker capable of effectively processing information and retaining it.
During this period, infants move from a symbiotic relationship with their principal
caregiver to establishing a separate sense of self.

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• The child is totally dependent on the caregiver for the fulfilment of her
needs.
• The period of the most rapid growth and development.
• Their skills and abilities increase

3. Early Childhood

This period has been correctly labeled, “the Declaration of Independence”,

for young children between the ages of 2 to 6 years are busy exerting their self-
initiated drives for autonomy and separateness. During early childhood, the body
becomes more agile and controlled. Thought at this stage is based on mental
representation; the child learns to represent the world mentally by means of
language or symbols. Thinking, however, is heavily influenced by children’s visual
perceptions of the problem-solving event. This period is an imaginative, creative,
fanciful time. Children branch out socially, as they learn to adapt to ever-widening
social networks, and friend tend to change rather quickly.
• ages 3 to 5 years old
• referred to as the preschool years consisting of the years which follow
toddlerhood and precede formal schooling.
• the child is busy learning language, is gaining a sense of self and greater
independence, and is beginning to learn the workings of the physical world.
• This knowledge does not come quickly, however, and preschoolers may
have initially have interesting conceptions of size, time, space and distance such
as fearing that they may go down the drain if they sit at the front of the bathtub
or by demonstrating how long something will take by holding out their two index
fingers several inches apart.
• A toddler’s fierce determination to do something may give way to a four-
year-old’s sense of guilt for doing something that brings the disapproval of others.

4. Middle Childhood

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Children generally exhibit a strong desire to engage in vigorous physical

activities, which reflects their increasing size and strength of muscles. During
these developmental years, children can reason logically about objects, events,
and relationships. Their thinking is bound, however, to a concrete world in which
they can only reason about objects they can see or manipulate. Children’s all
consuming interests in parents begin to subside as they withdraw some of their
emotional energy from adults and begin to unite with their society of peers. As
such, middle childhood is a time when peer relationships play an increasingly
complementary role to that of parents.
• Ages from 6 to 11 years old
• Comprise middle childhood and much of what children experience at this
age is connected to their involvement in the early grades of school.
• the world becomes one of learning and testing new academic skills and by
assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments by making comparisons between
self and others.
• Schools compare students and make these comparisons public through
team sports, test scores, and other forms of recognition.
• Growth rates slow down and children are able to refine their motor skills at
this point in life.
• Children begin to learn about social relationships beyond the family through
interaction with friends and fellow students.

5. Adolescence

The teenage years represent a period of transition in many areas. Physically,

adolescents are embarking on maturing both physically and sexually; cognitively,
their concrete world of thinking becomes unhinged as they can now reason
abstractly; and socially, friendships become more enduring and more intimate.
• from 12 to 18 years of age
• a period of dramatic physical change marked by an overall physical growth
spurt and sexual maturation, known as puberty.

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• a time of cognitive change as the adolescent begins to think of new

possibilities and to consider abstract concepts such as love, fear, and
freedom.
• have a sense of invincibility that puts them at greater risk of dying from
accidents or contracting sexually transmitted infections that can have lifelong
consequences.
• the beginning of this period is marked by puberty.
• Puberty refers to the stage around 11-14 years of age, when there is a spurt
in physical growth.
• This results in a rapid increase in height and weight and the emergence of
secondary sexual characteristics (face hair, pubic hair, sexual organs)
• Conflicts due to peer pressure occur and there will be needs for emotional
adjustment.

6. Early Adulthood
• The twenties and thirties are often thought of as early adulthood.
• The time when we are at our physiological peak but are most at risk for
involvement in violent crimes and substance abuse.
• The time of focusing on the future and putting a lot of energy into making
choices that will help one earn the status of a full adult in the eyes of others.
• Love and work are primary concerns at this stage of life.

7. Middle Adulthood
• The late thirties through the mid-sixties is referred to as middle adulthood.
• A period in which aging, that began earlier, becomes more noticeable and a
period at which many people are at their peak of productivity in love and
work.
• It may be a period of gaining expertise in certain fields and being able to
understand problems and find solutions with greater efficiency than before.

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• Also be a time of becoming more realistic about possibilities in life previously

considered; of recognizing the difference between what is possible and what
is likely.
• This is also the age group hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic in Africa resulting
in a substantial decrease in the number of workers in those economies (Weitz,
2007).

8. Late Adulthood
• Late adulthood is sometimes subdivided into two or three categories such as
the “young old” and “old old” or the “young old”, “old old”, and “oldest old”.
• the “young old” are the people between 65 and 79 and the “old old” or those
who are 80 and older.
• One of the primary differences between these groups is that the young old
are very similar to midlife adults; still working, still relatively healthy, and still
interested in being productive and active.
• The “old old” remain productive and active and the majority continues to live
independently, but risks of the diseases of old age such as arteriosclerosis,
cancer, and cerebral vascular disease increases substantially for this age
group.
• Issues of housing, healthcare, and extending active life expectancy are only
a few of the topics of concern for this age group.
• A better way to appreciate the diversity of people in late adulthood is to go
beyond chronological age and examine whether a person is
experiencing optimal aging, normal aging (in which the changes are similar
to most of those of the same age), or impaired aging (referring to someone
who has more physical challenge and disease than others of the same age).

D. DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS AND EDUCATION (HAVIGHURST)

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The Developmental Stages according to Robert Havighurst

A developmental stage is a task which arises at or about a certain period of

life of the individual, successful achievement of which leads to his happiness
and to success with later tasks, while failure leads to unhappiness in the
individual, disapproval by the society, and difficulty with later tasks.
Robert Havighurst emphasized that learning is basic and that it continues
throughout life span. Growth and Development occurs in six stages.

Developmental Tasks of Infancy and Early Childhood (ages birth to 6)

• Learning to walk
• Learning to take solid foods
• Learning to talk
• Learning to control the elimination of body wastes
• Learning sex differences and sexual modesty
• Forming concepts and learning language to describe social and physical reality
• Getting ready to read
• Learning to distinguish between right and wrong and beginning to develop
conscience.

Developmental Tasks of Middle Childhood (ages 6-12)

• Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games
• Building wholesome attitudes toward oneself as a growing organism
• Learning to get along with age-mates
• Learning an appropriate masculine or feminine social role
• Developing fundamental skills in reading, writing, and calculating
• Developing concepts necessary for everyday living
• Developing conscience, morality, and a scale of values
• Achieving personal independence

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• Developing attitudes toward social groups and institutions

Developmental Tasks of Adolescence (ages 12-18)

• Achieving new and more mature relations with age-mates of both sexes
• Achieving a masculine or feminine social role
• Accepting one’s physique and using the body effectively
• Achieving emotional independence of parents and other adults
• Preparing for marriage and family life
• Preparing for an economic career
• Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behavior;
developing an ideology
• Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior

.Developmental Tasks of Early Adulthood

• Selecting a mate
• Achieving a masculine or feminine social role
• Learning to live with a marriage partner
• Starting a family
• Rearing children
• Managing a home
• Getting started in an occupation
• Taking on civic responsibility
• Finding a congenial social group

Developmental Tasks of Middle Age

• Assisting teen-age children to become responsible and happy adults
• Achieving adult social and civic responsibility
• Reaching and maintaining satisfactory performance in one’s occupational
career
• Developing adult leisure-time activities

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 SED 2100 The Child and Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

• Relating oneself to one’s spouse as a person

• Accepting and adjusting to the physiological changes of middle age
• Adjusting to aging parents

Developmental Tasks of Later Maturity/Old Age

• Adjusting to decreasing physical strength and health
• Adjustment to retirement and reduced income
• Adjusting to death of a spouse
• Establishing an explicit affiliation with one’s age group
• Adopting and adapting social roles in a flexible way
• Establishing satisfactory physical living arrangements

E. Domains of Development

Human development is comprised of four major domains: physical

development, cognitive development, social-emotional development, and
language development. Each domain, while unique in its own, has much
overlap with all other domains. It is important to understand these concepts,
because everything related to human development can be traced back to these
four domains.

1. Physical development – This area studies the basic changes in the child’s
body, such as height and weight, and health factors that include nutrition and
health-related issues, such as safety concerns. The physical domain also
includes motor development, from the infant’s earliest grasping reflexes to
highly skilled execution of complex athletic feats during later childhood and
adolescence. The development of the brain and genes inherited from parents
is also a part of children’s physical development. It also includes growth of the

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body and brain, including patterns of change in sensory capacities, motor skills
and health.
It is also defined as the biological changes that occur in the body and
brain, including changes in size and strength, integration of sensory and motor
activities, and development of fine and gross motor skills.
Physical development in children follows a directional pattern. Muscles
in the body's core, legs and arms develop before those in the fingers and
hands. Children learn how to perform gross (or large) motor skills such as
walking before they learn to perform fine (or small) motor skills such as
drawing. Muscles located at the core of the body become stronger and develop
sooner than those in the feet and hands. Physical development goes from the
head to the toes.
As kids enter the preschool years, their diets become much more similar
to that of adults. Eating a variety of foods is also important to ensure that kids
get the nutrients that they need for healthy physical development. Instead of
allowing children to fill up on juice and milk, experts recommend limiting the
intake of such drinks. If a child is filling up on juice and milk, then they are
probably missing out on eating other foods.

2. Cognitive development – This reflects all the mental processes related to

how children come to know and understand their world- how they think,
decide, and learn. Cognition encompasses thought, intelligence, perception,
imagination, memory, and language. It refers to pattern of change in mental
abilities, such as learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning
and creativity.
It is also defined as the changes in the way we think, understand, and
reason about the world.

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As mentioned under the Roles of the Theorists tab Jean Piaget

developed great theories regarding the cognitive development of children.
Piaget's stages of cognitive development illustrates a child's growth.

3. Socioemotional development – this area studies changes in emotions,

temperament, moral reasoning, self-understandings, and peer relationships.
It also includes personality.
It is also defined as the changes in the ways we connect to other
individuals and express and understand emotions. The core features of
emotional development include the ability of a child to identify and understand
their own feelings, to accurately read and comprehend emotional states of
others, to manage strong emotions and their expression in a beneficial
manner, to regulate their own behavior, to develop empathy for others, and
to establish and maintain relationships.
Healthy social-emotional development for infants and toddlers develops
in an interpersonal context, specifically that of positive ongoing relationships
with familiar and nurturing adults. Emotion and cognition work together,
informing the child’s impressions of situations and influencing behavior.
Children will experience a range of emotional and cognitive development
related to interactions and relationships with adults and peers, identity of self,
recognition of ability, emotional expression, emotional control, impulse
control, and social understanding.
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Two approaches to human development

If you believe that there is extensive change from birth to adolescence,

little or no change in adulthood and decline in late old age, your approach to
development is traditional. In contrast, if you believe that even in adulthood

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developmental change takes place as it does during childhood, your approach is

termed life-span approach.
What are the characteristics of human development from a life-span
perspective? Paul Baltes (Sanrock, 2002), an expert in life-span development,
gives the following characteristics:
1. Development is lifelong. It does not end in adulthood. It will continue
developing even in adulthood.
2. Development is plastic. Plasticity refers to the potential for change
development is possible throughout the life-span. No one is too old to learn.
There is no such thing as “I am too old for that “.
Aging is associated with declines in certain intellectual abilities. These
declines can be prevented or reduced. In one research study, the reasoning
abilities of older adults were improved through retaining (Willies & Schose,
1994 cited by Santrock J., 2005)
3. Development is multidimensional. Development consists of biological,
cognitive, and socio-emotional dimensions.
Development as a process is complex because it is the product of
biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes (Santrock,
2002).

Biological processes involve changes in the individual’s physical nature. The

brains develop. People will gain height and weight. They will experience hormonal
changes when they reach the period of puberty, and cardiovascular decline as they
approach late adulthood. All these show the common biological processes in
development.
Development is relatively orderly.
(http://wwwcdipage.com/development .htm) Naschielle and Kenn will learn to sit,
crawl then walk before they can run the muscular control of the trunk and the
arms comes earlier as compared to the hands and fingers. This is the
proximodistal pattern. During infancy, the greatest growth always occurs at the
top – the head – with physical growth in size, weight and future differentiation
gradually working its way down from top to bottom (for example, neck , shoulders,
middle trunk and so on). This is the cephalo-caudal pattern. These development
patterns are common to Naschielle and Kenn.
Development takes place gradually.
(http://www.cdipage.com/develpoment.htm) Naschielle and Kenn won’t develop
into pimply teenagers overnight. It takes years before they become one. In fact,
that’s the way of nature. The bud does not blossom suddenly. The seed does not
germinate overnight. While some changes occur in a flash of insight, more often
it takes weeks, months or years for a person to undergo changes that result in the
display of developmental characteristics.
Cognitive processes involve changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence,
and language. Naschielle and Kenn develop from mere sounds to a word becoming

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two words, the two words becoming a sentence they would move on to
memorizing their first prayer, singing Lupang Hinirang in every flag ceremony to
imagining what it would be like to be a teacher or a pilot, playing chess and solving
a complex math problem. All these reflect the role of cognitive process in
development.
Socioemotional processes include changes in the individual’s relationship
with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality. As babies,
Naschielle and Kenn responded with a sweet smile when affectionately touched
and frowned when displeased and even showed temper tantrum when they could
not get or do what they wanted. From aggressive children, they may develop into
a fine lady and gentleman or otherwise, depending on a myriad if factors. They
may fall in love and get inspired for life or may end up betrayed, deserted and
desperate afterwards all these reflects the role of socioemotional processes in
development.
These biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes are inextricably
intertwined. While these processes are studied separately, the effect of one
process or factors on s person’s development is not isolated from the other
processes. If Kenn ansd Naschielle were undernourished and troubled by the
thought of father and mother about to separate, they could not concentrate on
their studies and consequently would fail and repeat. As a consequence, they may
lose face and drop out of school, revert to illiteracy, become unskilled, unemployed
and so on and so forth. See how biological process, affects the cognitive process
which in turn, affects the socioemotional process.
4. Development is contextual. Individuals are changing beings in a
changing world. Individuals respond to and act on contexts. These contexts
include the individual’s’ biological make up, physical environment, cognitive
processes, historical, social and cultural contexts. (Santrock, 2002)
Nashielle’s and Kenn’s biological make up, social and cultural contexts may
vary and therefore make them develop differently from each other.
5. Development involves growth maintenance and regulation. Growth
maintenance and regulation are three (3) goals of human development. The
goals of individuals reach middle and late adulthood, concern with growth
gets into the back stage while maintenance and regulation take the center
stage.

F. CONTEXTS AND DEVELOPMENT

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Influences on Development
1. Heredity inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents

2. Environment the world outside the self beginning in the womb, and the
learning that comes from experience.

3. Maturation unfolding of a natural sequence of physical and behavioral

changes, including readiness to master new abilities.

Contexts of Development

1. Social Context
a. Family
Nuclear family is two generational kinship, economic and household unit
consisting of one or two parents and their biological children, adapted
children, or stepchildren.
Extended family is a multigenerational kinship network pf parents children,
and other relatives sometimes living together in an extended-family
household.

b. Socioeconomic status and neighborhood

It is a combination of economic, and social factors describing an individual or
family, including income, education, and occupation.

c. Culture and ethnicity

Culture refers to a society’s or group’s total way of life, including customs,
traditions, laws, knowledge, beliefs, values, language and physical products,
from tools to artworks- all behavior and attitudes that are learned, shared
and transmitted among member of a social group.

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Ethnic group consists of people united by a distinctive culture, ancestry,

religion, language, and/or national origin, all of which contribute to a sense
of shared identity and shared attitudes, beliefs, and values.

2. Historical Context
a. Normative Influences consists of two types:
Normative age-graded influences are highly similar for people in a particular
age group. They include maturational events (such as puberty and menopause)
and social eventsm(such as entry into formal education, marriage, parenthood
and retirement)
Normative history-graded influences are significant events (such as pandemic,
World War II, nuclear explosion) that shape the behavior and attitudes of a
historical generation.

b. Nonnormative Influences- are unusal evetns that have a major impact

on individual lives. They are either typical events that happen at an atypical
time of life (such a marriage in the early teens or death of a parent when a
child is young) or atypical events (such as having a birth defect or being in an
airplane crash). They can also be happy events (such as winning the lottery).

c. Timing of Influences
Critical period is a specific time when a given event, or its absence, has
greatest or specific impact on development.
Sensitive period is a time in development when a person is particularly
open to certain kinds of experiences.

References

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Acero, VO et.al. Human Growth and Development and Learning: Rex

Bookstore
Bee, Helen. The Developing Child. Ninth Edition. A Pearson Education Company.
Copyright 2000 by Allyn and Bacon. Printed in the United State of America
Bustos, AS and Espiritu, SC. Psychological, Anthropological and Sociological
Foundations of Education. Katha Publishing Co., Inc 1996
Coleman, JS. The Adolescent Society, The Free Press Corporation
Hurlock. Elizabeth B. Developmental Psychology: A life Span Approach.,Fifth
Edition Mc Graw Hill Book Company, 1980
Jersild, AT. The Psychology of Adolescence, 2nd Edition Teachers College
Columbia University
Lerner, RM and Hultsch DF.Human Development: A Life-Span Perspective,
McGraw Hiil Book Company
Owens, Karen B. Child and Adolescent Development an Integrated Approach.
Thomson Asian Edition Copyright 2006
Papalia, ED and et.al. Human Development 9th and 10th Edition,Mc Graw Hill
2004

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