Human Growth and Development [EDUC 245]
My Human Growth and Development class is the first major-specific course I took at Longwood University. My reason for including a highlight from the course on this blog is that I was fortunate enough to be able to take an Honors section of the course.
One of the things that made this class an Honors course was that it was a heavily discussion based class rather than lecture based, and the students were given multiple opportunities to learn by teaching. For example, after the class had discussed the developmental stages of different age groups in depth, the course ended with the Three Ages Project.
Throughout the course, the class studied and discussed different theories about the cognitive, social/personality, and physical development of children under eighteen years of age. After these topics and theories had been discussed at length in the classroom, each student picked three minors, each from a different age group, to interview. For example, my interviewees were ages five, twelve, and sixteen. We asked the interviewees a range of questions that gave us clues about their cognitive, social/personality, and physical development. Using these clues, we were able to draw conclusions about whether the the children had developed according to the theories of such scholars as Piaget, Erikson, and Bronfenbrenner or if we saw patterns that indicated that any of the theories might be partially incorrect. After each student presented his/her findings to the class, we were easily able to identify widespread patterns. The overwhelming majority of the time, we were able to see that our interviewees had been developing almost exactly according to how the theorists claimed they should be. Below, you will see the PowerPoint presentation that I used as a visual aid when I presented my findings to my professor, Dr. Dorothy Cosby, and my classmates.
Being able to gather real-world data and compare it to data that famous theorists like Jean Piaget obtained himself was an interesting and informative experience. Being able to do so and then discuss the findings with my Honors family in a small class setting was even more rewarding. Our class was so engaging that I found that I was able to learn mostly by “doing” in the classroom; it was unnecessary for me to put a great deal of effort into studying because I was able to learn so well during class time. Because I am still unfamiliar with many teaching methods, I am not sure how my professor was able to conduct this class in such a way that almost all of our learning was done in the classroom. One of my goals throughout the rest of my college career is to pinpoint which methods Dr. Cosby employed to make so much of the course material stick so well in her students’ heads just by having them attend class.
