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 these researchers in my very first class at Trinity Christian College, AEDU 203: Introduction to Education. In a nutshell, John Dewey’s big thing was Pragmatics (or hands-on education), Maria Montessori was all about specialized learning and individualism, Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development is still a widely taught theories in psychology classes today, Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development is also a fundamental taught in psychology classes today and Vygotsky’s focus on the psychology of babies and children was trailblazing for its time.
All in all, this class has been thoroughly interesting. Every week had very interesting content, whether the readings or the videos. Much was learned in this class, and a lot of this information will be of great use to me as I move into my new career as an educator.

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