Child Psychology (Level 3 Award)

Child Psychology

The Level 3 Award in Child Psychology course is divided into twenty comprehensive modules:

Major Developmental Issues

1. The First Year of Life
Infant reflexes; Social development during the first year of life including the social smile and onset of fear of strangers.

2. The Formation of Attachments
Imprinting; Attachment (Bowlby) including cross-cultural studies; Harlow and surrogate mothers; Relevance of animal studies in child development.

3. Consequences of Breakdowns in Attachments
Maternal deprivation; Implications of theories of attachment and maternal deprivation when placing children with surrogates.

4. The Home, Family and School
Group vs family care and studies of effects of maternal employment and father absent families; Importance of peers and siblings.

5. Basic Principles of Research Methods
Nature and purpose of research, what is an experiment, supporting and refuting hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, control of variables, standardised instructions and procedures, methods of sampling, design of investigations.

6. The Development of Visual Perception
Introduction to the nature/nurture debate on visual perception; Fantz – form perception; Gibson and Walk – depth perception; how the physiology of the human visual system helps us judge depth and distance; Bower – size constancy; animal experiments on early sensory deprivation.

7. The Development of Language and Communication
Development of non-verbal communication in humans, gestures etc; comparisons with non-human primates; outline of language development in humans; including naturalistic observational in humans; including naturalistic observational studies and criticisms of these; Innate and reinforcement theories.

8. Intelligence and Intelligence Testing
Definitions of intelligence; mental age and IQ; Tests of intelligence; Advantages and disadvantages of IQ testing.

9. The Nature/Nurture Debate in the Study of Intelligence
Twins studies; stability of IQ; Are early experiences decisive for later development?

10. Data Collection and Interpretation
Tables and histograms, correlation and scattergrams; Mean; Range; Drawing conclusions from data.

The Child as an Individual

11. How Children Think
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; including studies of egocentrism and criticisms of his work.

12. Learning Theory
How Behaviour is Acquired, Learning and conditioning - classical conditioning and operant conditioning; including explanations of extinction, discrimination and generalisation; positive and negative reinforcement; Social Learning Theory and criticisms.

13. Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory
An Alternative Approach, Personality structure, 5 stage theory, criticisms.

14. Moral Development
Definition in psychological terms; investigation of moral behaviour, moral feelings and moral judgement.

15. The Development of Gender Roles
Sex-typing; Gender identity; Biological, social and cultural theories.

16. Aggression in Children
Biological basis of aggression; Psychological theory and aggression; Aggression as a learned response; Imitation of aggression; viewing violence; Punishment for aggression; sex differences in aggression.

17. Methods Used in Child Development Research
Observational, Survey, Correlational, Experimental – advantages and disadvantages.

18. Play
The importance of play to learning; Piaget’s theory of play; forms of play; Relevance of psychological theories to pre-school education; Play and learning in nursery schools; Play therapy.

19. Learning in School
Programmed learning and its relationship to learning theory - advantages and disadvantages; Discovery learning and its effectiveness.

20. Behaviour Modification
Explanation and examples; Relationship to learning theory; Points systems, Advantages and disadvantages.

COURSE ASSESSMENT

This course is marked through a process of continuous assessment guided by your tutor following ABC guidelines. This means that your qualification will be awarded according to your performance on assessments rather than by taking an exam.

Upon verification of the activities, exercises and assignments, a certificate of achievement will be awarded by the national awarding organisation ABC Awards, as confirmation that your written work has met all of the learning outcomes and assessment criteria for the programme.

COURSE DURATION

We recommended you spend approximately 90 hours of your time studying for the Child Psychology course. The pace of study is completely up to you. To give an example, if you dedicate 2 hours a week to the course it would take you a year to complete but if you could spare 4 hours a week you could complete it in six months.

COURSE FEES

Our aim is to provide you with the best deal available, therefore the registration fee, certification fee and full tutor support is included in the course price for you. The enrolment fee for the Child Psychology home study course is £312.50, though for a limited time we are offering you the opportunity to pay only £250 which is a 20% discount if you enrol online and pay in full.

You can also opt for our Easy Payment Plan and enrol online today by paying a deposit of £62.50 and then 4 equal payments of £62.50 per month. The first instalment is paid about a month after you receive your course.