LIFE SPAN DEVELOPMENT OBSERVATION

Life Span Development Observation



Life Span Development Observation

Introduction

The first theory of any substance that we learned about was John Locke's theory of the blank slate. This theory stated that all children were born as blank slates and were sculpted as people entirely based on their environment. This theory says that there are no innate traits that we have at birth and that are development is all nurture and no nature. What I like about this theory is that it stresses the importance of our surroundings and the responsibility that parents have in who their children grow to be. Even as adults, as with my clients, this theory reminds me how important our surroundings are and how influential our treatment of each other can be. Working with mentally ill clients I have to say that I strongly believe we are born with many personality traits and innate ways of thinking and processing information. Our nurture can strongly influence how that changes over time, but it is not the only component.

For adult educators, youth workers and those concerned with lifelong learning one of the great attractions of the literature examining life course development is that it may identify qualities or problems that are the distinctive property of young people and adults. If this can be done then the grounds exist for the establishment of specialisms such as youth work and adult education or learning. In the case of the latter, for example, we might look to possibilities around:

* process - do adults think differently? (This is what came to the centre of Knowles' theory of andragogy)

* situations - do they find themselves in different circumstances to other age groups?

* experiences - does the accumulation of experience change things. What difference does having been through a greater range of things make?

A further interest is that if there are some qualities that are uniquely youthful or adult, there may be implications for the sort of learning environments that could, and should, be fostered - and what subject matter should be attended to.

Birth Through Early Childhood

Observer: Mathew Dcruze

Code Name of Subject: Birth to Early Childhood development

Age of Subject: From child birth to 8 years

Date: 01-03-2010 to 05-03-2010

Location: Cairo

Supervisor Signature: Lewis. Ronald

How are we to define development? The first and obvious element is change - that development involves movement from one state to another. As a result an interest in development leads one to a concern for transitions. How is it that a person moves from this state to that? A second aspect is that this change is understood to have a permanent or lasting impact, or at least having some degree of 'carry-forward'. However, development is not change of any kind.

The feeling of satiety after a good meal clearly involves change, but no one would see that as developmental... Reference to lasting change does not provide a satisfactory solution, because some alterations that are obviously developmental may have no long term consequences; they serve their purposes at the time but they leave ...