Advanced seminar: Developmental assessment – a cultural-historical view

Timetable

24 hrs (x 45 minutes): 12 every week group meetings

6 hrs: individual consultations to help in preparing final written work

Meetings and consultations take place at the Ogrody Campus AMU (Poznań, Szamarzewskiego 89, building AB, room 81)

 

 

Module aim (aims)

To provide knowledge concerning cultural-historical theory in psychology

To provide knowledge about psychological methods of developmental assessment

To develop the ability of observing and analysing child's activity from psychological perspective

To develop skills related to study-experiment design

To improve interpersonal communication skills and working in groups ability

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

It is assumed that students already know the most basic concepts of developmental psychology, have ability to read scientific papers in English and are ready to work in small teams

Syllabus

The seminar focuses on the cultural-historical approach to the assessment of development in children. The seminar will focus on analysing of empirical experiments which test developmental changes in behaviour of children and underlying cognitive and/or emotional processes. Goals for students in this course include an in depth understanding of: 1) basic methods of developmental assessment, 2) psychometric versus individual approach to evaluation of development, 3) methodological problems in diagnosing child development.

Topics list:

What is mental development?

Socio-cultural source of development

Developmental research methodology

Genetic analysis: pointing gesture, speaking, reading and writing

Dynamic assessment: general principles, Cognitive Ability Profile

Presentations of final works

Final written work is expected to be prepared in small team (2-3 students) and consisting of three parts: 1) description of original experiment, 2) comparison of the original experiment structure and the developmental research methodology, 3) suggestions for transforming the structure of original experiment following the developmental research methodology

Reading list

1. Haywood, H. C., Lidz, C. S. (2007). Dynamic assessment in practice. Clinical and educational implications. Cambridge University Press (chapter 1: Dynamic assessment: introduction and review, pp. 1-10; chapter 3: General procedural guidelines for conducting an assessment that includes dynamic assessment, pp. 35-45).
2. Jabłoński, S. (2015). Assessment of literacy development from cultural-historical perspective. International Journal of Arts and Sciences, 8, 1, 133-146.
3. Mackenzie, N., Veresov, N. (2013). How drawing can support writing acquisition:
   Text construction in eariy writing from a Vygotskian perspective. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 38, 4, 22-29.
4. Veresov, N. (2010). Introducing cultural-historical theory: main concepts and principles of genetic research methodology. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 4, 83-90.