The first goal of this course is for you to better understand children. We’ll discuss a variety of topics including social, biological, and cognitive development, while also looking at development environments and how those contexts interact with a child’s predispositions and tendencies (e.g. nature vs. nurture).  Learning research-based information about children in this class might help you be a better parent and advocate for children, while also having more fun with them too.

A second goal of this course is to help you think like a developmental psychologist. How do we gather information about children?  What constitutes good data? How do we draw conclusions from that data?  The world is full of faulty reasoning; I hope taking this course will help you think more clearly about what constitutes good evidence generally.