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Ramadan Blog: Week VIII

The final blog of the class is finally upon us! This week had us read the final chapter of our LifeSmart texts. Along with our regular text readings, this week had us read Mooney’s short book called Theories of Childhood. Chapter thirteen, titled “Putting It All Together: Lifespan Development in Action” is exactly as the title insinuates. It talks about the real-life uses and applications of lifespan psychology. Lifespan psychology is not only useful for trained psychologists but for people of other professions like teachers, medical professionals or criminal justice, just to name a few. The chapter also spoke about ideas changing with time and political climate. Theories of Childhood is a short text that gives a brief introduction to John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky. These are five researchers who have been paramount in the field of educational and developmental psychology. This book was a nice review for me because we covered all of...
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Ramadan Blog: Week VII

Though the required reading for this entry was short, this chapter had some very interesting discussion points! Chapter twelve covers,arguably, one of the most controversial and mysterious topics in the history of mankind: death. The chapter starts out by defining death and talking about the four types of death: clinical, brain, legal and biological. The chapter then moves into the purpose of grieving and the different types of grieving. The well-known “5 Stages of Dying” by Kubler-Ross also made a brief appearance in this short chapter. Chapter twelve then ends with a rundown on the nature of spirituality and briefly touches on suicide.   The first thing that caught my eye was the discussion box on the top of page 283 titled “Whose Right to Decide?” It speaks of the leaps and bounds that have been made in the field of medical technology that can prolong a person’s lifespan. However, given the diversity of beliefs in our society, not everyone agrees with its use. In this examp...
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Ramadan Blog: Week VI

Chapters nine and ten really hit home for me, as they talk about the time in life that I am either now experiencing or will experience in the coming years. Again, I have found a few figures in my readings that I will be referencing as discussion points unlike last post, where I focused on rehashing the chapter reading. Chapter nine, titled “Early Adulthood” focuses on people aged 18 to 25. It starts out with the different ways people are initiated into adulthood and even touches on hazing and its issues. Then it moves into the significant factors that can affect development in early adulthood such as lifestyle. Another important thing it talks about is the relationship between sexual identity and gender roles such as dating trends and/or acceptable and unacceptable behavior for males and females in certain cultures. Stemming from this topic is the way young adults deal with relationships of sexuality and love, and finishes up with the type of jobs and work that young people tend ...
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Ramadan Blog: Week V

Week five just had us covering chapter eight of the textbook. After last week’s readings covered early and middle childhood, this week moves us into adolescence. This chapter was more straight-forward and factual than previous chapters, and did not have many interesting discussion pieces, in my opinion. So I’d like to apologize in advance if this blog entry isn’t as good as my other previous ones. It started out with the debate on when adolescence generally begins, and it varies from child to child, between the sexes and even culturally (p.186)! It is during this time children undergo hormonal and physical changes. It could be said that this time in life is the bridge to adulthood. Along with the changes that I mentioned earlier, teenagers undergo cognitive changes. Piaget calls it the “Formal Operational Stage”, where they can think abstractly, reason logically, exhibit hypothetical thinking and combine groups of concrete operations (p.191). It is for this reason I chose to teac...
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Ramadan Blog: Week IV

Week four had us covering “Early Childhood” and “Middle Childhood” in chapters six and seven respectively. There were many discussion topics that caught my attention in this week’s reading, so I will not spend as much time rehashing what was read. Instead I will dedicate more time to discussion of these topics, as I feel it would make the reading more interesting. The book defines the early childhood age range as being from ages two to six. Chapter four starts out with the physical development that occurs, it a worth noting that more rapid growth happens during this time that children grow about 12 inches and gain an average of 5 pounds a year (p.130). The chapter moves from physical into the mental development of the child, covering motor, cognitive, language, social developments. It is during this time that all of these important aspects keep growing exponentially. In terms of motor development, they start improving on their motor skills. For instance they go from teetering aro...
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Ramadan Blog: Week III

Week 3 had us read chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the LifeSmart textbook along with having us take a look at the “Life Through The Ages” handout on Moodle. Chapter 3 is titled “Pregnancy and Prenatal Development”. It starts out with a biological rundown of how pregnancy occurs, which is via meiosis upon fertilization of the egg cell by the sperm cell. It also gives a brief genetic rundown on the basics like phenotypes and genotypes and moves into how genetic disorders occur. Along with telling us how they occur it goes into a few well known disorders like Klinefelter syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease (p.58).   Along with a general biology and genetics rundown, chapter 3 gives us a brief embryology rundown taking us through the germinal, embryonic and fetal periods of human development. The chapter then closes out with different factors that could lead to issues with the child during pregnancy and different scientific technologies that could be used to diagnose and possible treat the ch...
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Ramadan Blog: Week II

The Chapter 2 reading for Week 2 of class is, again, a walk down memory lane. For the record, there’s nothing wrong with that. Theories of Development: Interpreting the Lifespan starts out with classic Freudian Psychoanalysis theory, which I feel we can safely say is mostly outdated though needless to say, his contribution to the field of psychology was immense in its time. Funny enough, the caption on page 31, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” gave me a chuckle as I’m doing this assignment with a cup of black coffee and cigar in hand. The chapter then moves into Cognitive theories starting with Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory which I feel holds more weight today than Freud’s Psychoanalytic theories. After Erikson comes Piaget and his “Stages of Development” theory, and wraps up with Vygotsky’s “Sociocultural Theory”. Just as I mentioned with Erikson’s theories, I believe the same of Piaget and Vygotsky’s contributions: they hold up much better in today’s psychological world...
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