Course Reflection Assignment

For preassessment purposes, tell about what you know about child/adolescent development. Also, describe how your current knowledge of development informs your philosophy of instruction. There is not a right or wrong way to answer this question (it's okay if you have read ahead - feel free to write about what you learned). Please do cite a source (one of our textbooks will do).

Before I explain my knowledge about child/adolescent development I would like us to take a brief look at Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theoretical foundation for youth development. Bronfenbrenner noted that child and adolescent development occurs in interaction with a set of social systems. Young people grow up in families, peer groups, school, work settings, neighborhoods, and within societal structures and norms.

I strongly agree with his theory because I think he wanted people to understand children/ adolescent development and to know that children’s lives should be looked at from all different directions. He believed that children’s lives are affected by many things including their peers, the relationship that their parent have with their teachers, their parents’ work schedule, what religious beliefs the child may have and possibly even a certain political views their parents may have. Bronfenbrenner wanted us to know that when assessing a child, we should look at all these systems in their lives and try to get a better sense of who they are. To add to Bronfenbrenner’ theory, I personally think that technology has added a global dimension to youth development.

I think that there are many reasons why technology is good for children’s development, but I believe that there is more bad effect to counteract each good. Today, parents give their children phones so they can keep track of where their children are or children can use the phones for emergencies. I think that phones allow children to interact and communicate with each other. To counteract this, I have noticed that children have stayed attached to their phones and that has made children lazy to interact with each other. Children are no longer going out to do things that I grew up doing as an adolescent. I believe that this has caused children to become obese and has caused their body to become hunched over from staying bent over all day. There are good benefits to technology; it has allowed deaf to hear and the blind to see. In my belief the use of technological devices have a huge negative impact to a developing mind of children/adolescent.

Technology has other negative effect to those who are born without these disabilities, headphones cause partial deafness and straining of the eyes from staring at the screen can cause weakness of sight. I think that parents should be well aware of the harmful effects of technology before giving their children phones to play with. I also think that through interaction with various social groups or systems that young people  will develop competencies and values.

As a future teacher, I think that parent involvement in schools can make a difference in a child’s development. Parents should get to know the teachers and that will allow the parents to advocate for their child and make sure their child is getting the right tools they need to succeed later in life. But for most parents, being at school often is not an option because of other requirements. Parents can still be important support system for their child’s development. It is important that parent talk to their child about school, they should monitor their school progress and that can put their child on the path to academic success.

References

Addison, J. T. (1992). Urie Bronfenbrenner. Human Ecology, 20(2), 16-20.

Berk, L.E. (2000). Child Development (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 23-38

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1990). Discovering what families do. In Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family.

Henderson, Z. P. (1995). Renewing our social fabric. Human Ecology, 23(1), 16-19