Chapter 1 - What Is a Child?

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of child development theories and highlights the diverse nature of children, their lack of homogeneity, and their widely differing talents and motivations. It provides a sense of children and childhood and also outlines some basic child psychology. As a population children change over time in similar ways: They grow bigger, get stronger, and learn more. However, across a similar population, individual children can also have many differences. Child development is the study of these differences and similarities. An understanding of child development is necessary for individuals who want to carry out evaluation studies with and for children. This understanding will help prevent errors in judgment, minimize poor design of evaluation studies, and provide more believable results. The chapter also discusses the stages of child development that include physical development, socioemotional development, and cognitive development. These developments are intended to explain the differences and similarities between children that change with age.