Mind Matters: The Science Behind How Children Learn

Course Description

Students in this course will have the opportunity to explore the fascinating field of child development with a focus on how developmental psychology research is conducted. They will have the opportunity to design their own research study and present it at the end of the course in a mini poster fair format. Instruction will be provided through lectures, videos, demonstrations, guest speakers, and hands-on learning opportunities to help students become familiar with psychology research in the context of child development. Further, students will have the opportunity to speak with researchers who focus on developmental psychology and learn about how social science research works by being introduced to a variety of research methods and research topics.

Topics will include theories of child development (e.g., stage theories, attachment styles), infant development, the development of executive functions (e.g., planning, working memory), future-oriented skills (e.g., prospective memory, delay of gratification, saving), moral development, and more. Students will engage with these topics both in the specific context of conducting research with young children and the broader psychology research field.

For their final activity in this course, students will propose and present their own research project on any of the topics covered in the course. The presentations will happen in a poster-fair format to allow students to simulate the experience of presenting at a psychology conference. During the fair, students will share and discuss their research ideas with peers to gain experience in communicating and learning about psychology research in an academic setting. The purpose of the research poster is to allow students to practice sharing research ideas in a way that is common in the psychology field, while encouraging creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge exchange. Given this, students will be required to attend the final day of the course in order to present their research.

This course will allow students to learn about a specific area of psychology that they may not encounter in high school (child development), while providing them with an understanding of how psychological research is conducted and how this might differ from research in the natural sciences. It also supports students in developing, designing, and communicating their own research ideas in a collaborative academic setting.