Take a Look at Your Own Life:
For this assignment, you will have the opportunity to explain these theories as they relate to your own real-life experiences. Your first task is to take the position of a researcher who will now present a case study (i.e., a process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a single person). As a researcher, what questions do you have about your participant’s childhood as it relates to each domain and each stage of development (i.e. period of time) in your life? You have already completed an earlier assignment where you wrote a set of questions. These questions will be the basic outline for your entire paper! Use these questions to support your paper!
Lifeline:
For this lifeline project, you will work toward understand your own development over these stages of development (i.e. periods of time): Sensory-motor years (0-2 years old,); The Early Childhood Years (3-5 years old); Middle Childhood (6-12 years old), and Adolescence (12-25 years old). You will be focusing on four developmental domains we study within each period: cognitive, psychosocial, language and literacy, and physical development. And guess what! You will organize your paper into sections using the stages of development.
Theory to Practice:
So, each section is a collection of great stories and examples from your participant = YOU! Then you will be using a variety of theories to analyze their stories (i.e., experiences, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions). In fact, you must have a minimum of two theories/theorists from your readings represented throughout your paper. So, you’re asking yourself questions about Psychosocial development, and you remember being dropped off at school and when you weren’t looking, your mom would sneak out without saying goodbye. You would cry and cry. You’ll would then write about that experience and then provide an example of a theory that explains your behavior. For example, what would theorist, Eric Erikson say about this behavior?
Structure of Your Paper:
So, let’s review the structure of your paper and how you will present your case study.
Section 1: The Participant
Demographics: Background of the participant – Provide a name, age, cultural background, and city in which you resided in as a child.
Other Background: Where did you grow up? Who did you live with? Include who raised you, any siblings, and the neighborhood. If you are comfortable, your socioeconomics growing up. This is just your general background. We will get into much more detail within the other sections.
For Sections 2 through 5 of the Paper: You will write a minimum of two stories/examples in your childhood for each subsection under each section. For each story, you will relate the real-life experience with research/theories. At the end, you will have 16 subsections x 2 stories = 32 stories. Here’s the breakdown:
image.pngSection 2: Infant/Toddler Stage of Development
Physical Development
Cognitive Development
Language and Literacy Development
Social-Emotional Development
Section 3: Early Childhood Stage of Development
Physical Development
Cognitive Development
Language and Literacy Development
Social-Emotional Development
Section 4: Middle Childhood Stage of Development
Physical Development
Cognitive Development
Language and Literacy Development
Social-Emotional Development
Section 5: Adolescent Stage of Development
Physical Development
Cognitive Development
Language and Literacy Development
Social-Emotional Development
For EACH of these subsections, you will be:
telling a minimum of two stories about a milestone, a challenge, an experience, or situation that occurred during this stage of development (e.g., two stories for what your physical development was like during the infant/toddler stage; two stories for what your cognitive development was like during the infant/toddler stage; etc.).
Using our readings or your own research to provide examples of theories or child development research that relates to each of the stories (see examples of past student papers that I provided in this assignment link).
Ensure that citations are used for the examples you find and that a reference is at the end of your paper referencing that citation.
All papers will go through TurnItIn to check for plagiarism, cite all your sources!
Section 6: Your Experience / Reflection of Assignment
Provide two paragraphs about what you learned from this assignment. You have had the wonderful opportunity to apply some important theories to real-life scenarios. Was it helpful? Do you have a better understanding of theory to practice? Discuss your learning experience here.
Formatting and References:
Your paper should be approximately 14-18 pages, double spaced, with citations, in APA format. You must use citations in your paper. If you are referencing a page from our readings, you will cite it by writing (Valdez, 2024, 3.4.1). This indicates Module 3, learning goal 4, section 1. Then you should make sure it is in your own words and summarizes the readings. Be very careful not to plagiarize information from our book or from any websites. You may use other website resources but be sure to reference all sources. You must cite these properly and you must have a reference page at the end of your paper.
