This reader contains source material for an up-to-date study of child development as it applies to major issues in child care and education. The emphasis is on studying early childhood in cultural contexts - in families and in preschool settings. Part 1 elaborates a socio-cultural approach to early development, taking emotional attachment, communication and language and daycare as examples. Part 2 considers how children's emerging capacities for empathy, inter-subjectivity and social understanding enable them to negotiate, talk about and play out relationship themes, both in the family and preschool. Part 3 concentrates on early learning, with chapters on the way parents support children's acquisition of new skills, young children negotiating their role in learner-teacher relationships and toddlers learning to collaborate with each other. Part 4 continues the theme of children's initiation into socio-cultural practices from a cross-cultural perspective, with studies drawn from such diverse contexts as Cameroon, Guatemala, Italy, Japan and the United States. This is the first of three readers which have been specially prepared as readers for the Open University MA Course: ED840 Child Development in Families, Schools and Society.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This introduction to child literacy development looks at the subject from an international perspective and is appropriate for students and professionals across a wide-range of disciplines.

Explorations of language development in different types of learner populations and across various languages. This volume examines language development in different types of learner populations and across various languages. The contributors analyze experimental studies of child and adult language acquisition, heritage language development, bilingualism, and language disorders. They consider theoretical and methodological issues; language development in children, discussing topics that range from gestures to errors in person and number agreement; and development and attrition of (morpho)syntactic constructions in second language learners, bilinguals, and Alzheimer's patients. The approach is "crosslinguistic" in three senses of the word: the contributors offer analyses of acquisition phenomena in different languages; they consider "crosslinguistic influence," or the potential effects of multiple languages on one another in the mind of the same speaker; and (in a novel use of the term, proposed by the editors) the chapters bring together theoretical and methodological approaches pertinent to the linguistics of language development in children, adults, and heritage speakers.

Help students understand how culture impacts development - and why it matters. Through current research and examples from around the world, Arnett/Maynard’s Child Development provides students with a more accurate and practical understanding of how development works in the real world. Whether they travel the globe or remain in their home towns, students will benefit from being able to think culturally about human development and our culturally diverse and globalized world. New U.S. and international videos, shot in several countries, allow students to observe similarities and differences in human development across cultures. MyDevelopmentLab is an integral part of the Arnett/Maynard program. Key learning applications include a personalized study plan, MyDevelopmentLab Video Series, and MyVirtualChild. A better teaching and learning experience The teaching and learning experience with this program helps to: Personalize Learning – MyDevelopmentLab is online learning. MyDevelopmentLab engages students through personalized learning and helps instructors from course preparation to delivery and assessment. Understand Culture and Diversity – Extensive cultural coverage is woven into the narrative and on vivid display in images. Improve Critical Thinking – Students will learn to think critically about the influence of culture on development. Learning objectives, listed at the start of each chapter and within every section, help students better organize and understand the material. Engage Students – Research and examples on the similarities and differences in child development across cultures will fascinate students. Explore Research – Students are presented with current research and examples from around the world. Support Instructors – All supplements were developed around the textbook’s carefully constructed learning objectives. Child Development: A Cultural Approach, covers prenatal development through adolescence and emerging adulthood and is available in hardcover, paperback, and à la Carte versions. It is also available in an abridged paperback version, Child Development through Middle Childhood . Click here to view a sample chapter! http://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/arnettmaynard/ 020594972X / 9780205949724 Child Development Plus New MyDevelopmentLab with eText Package consists of 0205841074 / 9780205841073 Child Development: A Cultural Approach 0205206522 / 9780205206520 NEW MyDevelopmentLab with Pearson eText -- Access Card

As children are learning to become competent members of their society, so also are they learning to become competent speakers of their language. In other words socialisation and language acquisition take place at the same time in a child's experience. In this book, Elinor Ochs explores the complex interaction of these two processes. Focusing in particular on the experiences of children in Samoa, Ochs examines both the cognitive and socio-cultural dimensions of children's language development. She shows that language competence includes not only knowledge of grammatical principles and sentence construction but also knowledge of the norms that link language to social and cognitive context; and that local social and cultural systems as well as children's individual psychological and biological capacities, organise their understanding and production of particular language constructions. This innovative study will appeal widely to anthropologists, developmental psychologists, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, communication specialists and educationists interested in child development and caregiver-child communication.