HHD 2510 - ASSESSMENT OF CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT IN REAL WORLD CONTEXTS
Credits: 3.0
The course is intended for interdisciplinary graduate students (masters and doctoral) from such programs as applied developmental psychology, developmental psychology, social work, early childhood special education, health and rehabilitation sciences, and nursing. The course content and applied group activities will help prepare graduate students as emerging leaders to understand 'best practices' in the measurement of both children's development and the quality and impact of services and interventions that are applied to them and to their families. These 'best practices' are both professionally sanctioned by the major national early childhood professional organizations and many also have a research evidence-base that supports their use. Thus, this course will help students to understand and use various applied assessment strategies that can: (1) describe the development and progress of children (birth to adulthood) and families in functional ways; (2) sensitively monitor children's progress in intervention programs; (3) be applied by teachers and other direct care professionals; (4) collect evidence of children's daily functioning in natural everyday settings; (5) be selected to conduct applied program evaluation research for schools, agencies, and human service programs; and (6) document the impact and outcomes of intervention programs. The course will help students who are interventionists, but is not primarily clinical in orientation. Rather, it is designed to prepare future leaders-researchers, program administrators, program evaluators, and policy specialists-in best practices and their implications. It is a required course in the ADP MS course sequence.
Recent Instructors
Stefano Bagnato