HONS EDUC 245 – Human Growth & Development

EDUC 245 was the first Education class I had to take for my major. I am currently enrolled in the Secondary Education program at Longwood, and EDUC 245 is the Human Growth & Development class every Education (and Nursing) major must take in order to satisfy an Academic Goal for graduation.

I had Dorothy Cosby for my professor in the Honors section of this class, which was held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00-3:15pm.

We went through the stages of development, their prescribed ages, popular developmentalists in the field of education, various types of parenting, disabilities in the classroom, and more. My favorite units in the class had to be learning about newborns and the birthing process, and well as middle childhood.

Over the course of the semester, we read about Piaget, Vygotsky, Marcia, Bronfenbrenner, and more. Each of these developmentalists brought groundbreaking views on childhood development into the spotlight. However, the majority of the time we focused on Piaget and Vygotsky because many of their views are still held today.

Each week, students had a chapter in the textbook due for reading so that, by the end of the semester, we would have read the book in its entirety. Every other month, we’d also be assessed on this reading through take-home quizzes that would encompass 3-5 chapters at a time.

I liked how our quizzes were set up because we could take as much time as we needed and be able to do them in the comfort of our room or the library or wherever we wanted. We could also pick and choose what questions we wanted to answer for credit. Professor Cosby would separate the quiz into each chapter and, within that, we’d have 20 multiple choice questions to answer and three or four short answer questions we could pick from. This way, we could get credit for what we knew and have a better chance of getting a good grade on each quiz.

We also had several papers in the course: two Personal Reflections, a Three Ages paper, and a Research Paper. The Personal Reflections were each 2-3 pages in length, while the other two papers had to be 7-10 pages in length, not including a title page and works cited page.

I particularly enjoyed the Three Ages Project the most in this class.

For the project, each student had to interview three different people, one from each stage of development. The first interview would be with someone in Early Childhood (Ages 3-6), the second with someone in Late Childhood (Ages 7-12), and the third with someone in their Adolescence (Ages 13-19). I chose to interview three boys: a family friend, my cousin, and my boyfriend.

I asked each boy the same set of questions, which allowed me to see the differences in their answers and thinking patterns more clearly. After the interviews, I had to write a 7-10 page paper on their answers and why I thought they answered in the way they did, as well as helpful tips for any developmental delays or drawbacks.

I enjoyed writing this paper the most because it allowed me to find out more about my loved ones and see them in a different perspective, a developmental perspective. It was also our last paper to write for the class, due at the end of April.

I ended up receiving a 90% for the Three Ages Paper from Professor Cosby, and I’ve included a sample of it below: