The first letter of your last name = The first letter of the country or city (anywhere in the world) where the infant will be born.
Look up this city/country, and make sure you can find information about its demographics online. If not, choose a different place.
2. Racial/Ethnic Identity
Based on your (cursory) online research, select a locationally-relevant racial/ethnic identity for the parents of your infant.
Try to make this different from how you or anyone in your family identifies.
Consider possible intersections with immigration status, if relevant.
3. Socioeconomic Status (SES)
The second digit of your area code × 10 = the percentile of the place-specific income/education distribution where your family falls.
Find representative photos of these two microsystems, based on your answers to 1–3.
Infancy
Informed by both the context that you have developed, Bush et al. (2017), and lecture, identify:
2 possible sources of prenatal stress
1 source of postnatal stress
1 positive event
1. Prenatal Exposure
The last digit of your phone number is the month of gestational age at which your infant’s parent is exposed to the first stressor.
Write a few sentences about the stressor and its impact on the pregnant person and on prenatal development. Talk with your partner about how to take into account the full prenatal developmental context.
If it is even, parent/infant are exposed to the postnatal stressor. Write a few notes about the stressor and its impact. Talk to your partner about how the stressor interacts with the broader developmental context, and with the preceding events you have determined.
Introduce your Infant DnD child (including their name!), and describe the relevant microsystems and broader context of their birth and early development. Thinking of the readings and our discussions in class, what are the relative risks, challenges, and opportunities that they face, by virtue of this context?
2. ...as it pertains to physical development (~100-150 words)
Next, use the resources collected and maintained by UNICEF (e.g., the datasets, country profiles, publications, etc.) to inform your selection of at least two relevant contextual factors for your infant's physical development (these factors can be relevant pre- or postnatally). Describe and explain the factors you have identified, being sure to cite your sources.
3. Recommendations to combat poverty (~250-300 words)
Now, imagine that you are invited to help leaders (local administrators, community organizers, or other officials) in the context of your Infant DnD child to boost the physical development (e.g. physical health and well-being) of their young children.
The leaders want:
at least 2 recommendations based on research (e.g., using Blair & Raver, 2016, or Mora & Nestle, 2000) that minimize the effects of poverty or other risk factors and boost resilience among the children from families occupying lower-resourced positions within your context.
recommendations that make sense for their local families---ones that address their children's contexts and relevant needs.
Finally, how do (or can) your recommendations take biological sensitivity to context into account?
Submit your write-up as a pdf, making sure to include your name in your submission. Your reflection should be no longer than 2 pages.
Please be sure to use APA citation format (you do not need a reference page, but should use in-text citations where relevant).
Toddlerhood
1. Temperament
Use the below table to discover your child's relative levels of nine traits of temperament.
For all dimensions:
If the number is between 0 and 3, your infant is Low
If the number is between 4 and 5, your infant is Mid
If the number is between 6 and 9, your infant is High
Activity Level
The second-to-last digit of your cell phone #
Adaptability
The first number of your cell phone #
Approach/Withdrawal
The fifth digit of your student ID number
Distractibility
The last digit of your student ID number
Intensity
The first digit of the zip code of your home town
Mood
The last digit of the zip code of the earliest home address you can remember
Persistence
The last digit of the number of your street address (2627 Main St → “7”)
Regularity
The last digit of your birthdate day (If you were born on the 19th → “9”)
Sensitivity
The last digit of your birth month (If you were born in October → “0”)
Considering your child's scores on the nine dimensions of temperament, do your best to classify them according to the three-part classification system of “Easy/Flexible,” “Active/Feisty,” and “Slow to Warm/Cautious (you may want to refer to Understanding and Adapting to Individual Temperaments).
Easy or flexible: Children with this temperament tend to be easy-going, happy, calm, and adaptable, and have regular sleeping and eating habits.
Active or feisty: Children with this temperament may be very active, fussy, and have intense positive or negative reactions to a variety of situations. They may also have irregular sleeping and eating habits.
Slow to warm or cautious: Children with this temperament may be hesitant or fearful in unfamiliar situations, move slowly, and prefer to watch a situation for a while before joining in. They may have a difficult time with changes, such as having a new caregiver or a shift in the daily schedule.
If the number is between 1 and 6, your child's attachment pattern is Secure
If the number is between 7 and 8, your child's attachment pattern is Avoidant
If the number is 9, your child's attachment pattern is Resistant
Flesh out your child's temperamental profile and attachment behaviors: what does this mean for your child and their development? What are some things your toddler likes to do? Find 1–2 photos of relevant activities or contexts.
Preschool
1. Your Child's Social-Emotional Profile (~150-200 words)
Describe your child's social-emotional profile, including:
their temperament (classified into one of the three profiles, or explaining why you cannot), and
their attachment pattern (with a caregiver of your choosing).
What do these mean for the child in their context? What sorts of activities do they enjoy?
Expand on this profile to give context for your child's history, family, and environment, including a characterization of risks or stressors relating to their social-emotional development, as well as protective factors or buffers.
2. Ensuring Goodness of Fit (~100-150 words)
Now think about yourself or an imagined caregiver for your child. Reviewing these reflection questions, consider:
How will you create a goodness of fit for your toddler?
What will be important for you to attend to as a caregiver, and how will you address it?
3. Preparing for School/Daycare Entry (~200-250 words)
What kind of educational or classroom context do you think would be ideal for your child?
First, research relevant school or daycare formats for the context of your child (along with those we've covered in class), and select one that you think would be either realistic or best for your child.
Describe the school or daycare format that you researched, including how you made your decision (e.g., were there other options available that you think would have been a worse fit, or do you think this is the only option that your child would have access to?)
Next, address the following questions, drawing on your work in parts 1-2, and on the material covered in class up until this point.
What will be important to do to prepare your child for this context?
What do you think their primary challenges will be, and is there anything you can do to address them and aid them in their transition?
What would be the 'best case scenario' for how the child would react to this new context (what do you hope for them)?
How is the surrounding "culture" embedded in the childcare context that you're describing, à la Vélez-Agosto et al. (2017): e.g., how does this early context for young children define and inform culturally appropriate ways of engaging, values, etc.?
Your reflection should include at least two citations.
Submit your write-up as a pdf, making sure to include your name in your submission. Your reflection should be no longer than 2 pages.
Please be sure to use APA citation format (you do not need a reference page, but should use in-text citations where relevant).
School
You received preparation for this assignment via the Bridging Informal and Formal Learning small-group discussions, brainstorming, and presentations that you did. It will also be helpful to think about the Rogoff lecture we watched, the Sitabkhan article, Vygotsky review, and How People Learn chapter that you read, as well as our discussions in class.
Your DnD child is now in elementary school.
Think about their everyday experiences, in their context.
Select at least one everyday experience that supports a specific capacity, skill, or mode of learning that is infrequently valued in formal education or schooling. Your assignment should address the following:
1. Your child's everyday experiences and informal learning (~100-150 words)
Describe the everyday experience(s) that support this skill/capacity, with sufficient detail to really illustrate how the on-the-ground experience of the child gives them practice in the skill/capacity. Be concrete.
Describe or define the skill/capacity, and what you mean by it.
2. ...brought into formal learning (~250-300 words)
Now think about how this skill could be integrated into formal learning spaces.
Describe one activity or method that could take place in the classroom or in the context of formal schooling, where your child's previous informal training re: this skill/capacity would shine. This may be a restructuring of activities or practices already taking place in formal educational settings.
Describe one activity or method that would help other children not yet practiced in this skill/capacity to develop it, in the context of formal schooling.
Describe a way of assessing (testing or evaluating) this skill or capacity, that is as consistent with your child's context as possible (that is, that is ecologically valid). Be creative!
Submit your write-up as a pdf, making sure to include your name in your submission. Your reflection should be no longer than 2 pages.
Please be sure to use APA citation format (you do not need a reference page, but should use in-text citations where relevant).
In your assignment for this week, you will be thinking about your child's experience with language, literacy, and the digital world outside of school, and how that connects to their experience of language and literacy inside of school.
Do your best to ground your writing in research about the place your child is from. For example:
Ethnologue provides information about the languages spoken around the world and basic information about how they're used
many Censuses collect information about people's "mother tongues"
you can find relevant information on things like internet access and literacy rates here
I like to get a sense of the "linguistic landscape" of a place by using street view on Google Maps (e.g, is there a lot of signage? what language(s) is it in?).
Your write-up should address the following:
1. Your child's language environment (~150-200 words)
Describe your child's language environment outside of school, including:
the languages and dialects that they hear spoken around them and by whom (e.g., what do their family members speak? their neighbors? teachers? friends?)
the language(s) that they themselves speak or understand
what their relationship to those languages is, and/or how they learned them
who they most often have conversations with (groups of other children? a parent? grandparent?)
where they are exposed to written language (e.g., books in the home and at school, signs, labels or packaging...), and in what language
+ Remember to think about digital environments, as well!
2. ...and language skill, knowledge, and identity (~100-150 words)
Describe your child's language knowledge/skill, including:
What are they really skilled at, when it comes to using language? (e.g., telling stories or jokes, understanding speakers’ hidden meanings, memorizing the words to songs, translating from one language to another, being polite...)
What do they have a lot of language for (e.g., do they know the names of all the dinosaurs? plant or animal names? saints? how to describe interpersonal relationships?)
How does their language relate to their identity?
What is their experience with reading?
What is their relationship to reading?
3. School language environment (~200-250 words)
Now, given the context that you have developed in the previous two sections, think about how your child's language experience, knowledge, and skill relate to language use and knowledge in your child's school environment. Questions to think about:
How does how language is used in your child's school environment compare to how language is used in your child's life outside of school?
What are the language and literacy skills that are important in your child’s school environment, and how do those relate to the skills that your child has developed (How does what your child's teachers think is important for your child to demonstrate, and what your child's caregivers think is important for the child to demonstrate, relate?)
What is the language knowledge that is important in your child’s school environment, and how does it relate to your child's language knowledge? (How representative is your child's language knowledge of what is assumed by teachers, used by teachers to evaluate children, or tested on exams?)
How does the way that the written word and digital technology appear in your child's school environment and how they appear in your child's environment outside of school, relate?
Submit your write-up as a pdf, making sure to include your name in your submission. Your reflection should be no longer than 2 pages.
Please be sure to use APA citation format (you do not need a reference page, but should use in-text citations where relevant).