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Jack Bauer, PhD
Department of Psychology
University of Dayton
Dayton, OH 45469
(937) 229-2617

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Psychology Department

College of Arts
and Sciences

PSY 251:
Human Growth & Development

Download the Review for Exam 4

Extra Credit Survey. The survey takes approximately 30 minutes to complete and is worth 1 percentage point added to your total course grade. Download the survey here and provide your responses on the scantron distributed in class (if you missed class, stop by my office, SJ 303). You must follow the instructions and turn in your scantron as well as the informed consent form that you signed by noon, Dec. 18. Instead of the survey, if you prefer, you may write a well-organized, 1-page, substantive summary of the following article, which you can download via PsycINFO (see link below).

Bauer, J. J., & McAdams, D. P. (2004). Growth goals, maturity, and well-being. Developmental Psychology, 40, 114-127.

Fall 2008
MWF 10:00-10:50, Humanities Center 206
Office Hours: MW 3-4:00 and by appointment

T.A.: Sunwoong Park, office hours by appointment

Syllabus
Required Texts
Course Objectives
Grading & Requirements
Assistance & Attendance
Schedule

Required Text
You may use the print or on-line version
Print: Santrock, J. W. (2007). Life-Span Development, 11th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Note: You may use the 10th or 9th edition. Also, a copy of the text is available on reserve at the library.
On-line: Click the text image to the right, enter keywords “Santrock life-span," and follow instructions to purchase

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Course Objectives
This course presents an overview of human development across the life span. This course has three main aims. First, the course is designed for you to cultivate your ability to think from a developmental perspective—a perspective that helps you to step outside the immediate moment and to assess where that moment came from and where it’s going. Second, more specifically, the course is designed to help you better understand your own life (and the lives of those around you) from a developmental perspective. Third, the written assessments in this course are designed for you to sharpen your skills at identifying a main idea and explaining that idea clearly.

This course challenges you to think about the individual person and people in terms of dynamic processes rather than merely static appearances. The course views human development along several dimensions (e.g., cognitive, emotional, social, biological), where each dimension contributes to the development of the others. The course also views the individual person as part of biology, culture, and history yet also as having a mind of his/her own. By cultivating the ability to think about life developmentally, you put yourself in a better position to understand yourself and others, to adapt to life, and to shape it.

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Course Grading & Requirements
Your grade will be calculated from a total of either 500 or 600 points, depending on whether you choose to write a research paper.

Exams. Four exams will cover the content of the class lectures and text. Therefore you are expected to attend class, take notes, and read the text as the course progresses. The exams will require you to integrate information, not just memorize it. The final exam is not cumulative. If you miss an exam, you must have a legitimate reason (by university standards) for taking a make-up exam in order to earn points for that exam. In such a case you must make every attempt to notify me in advance. Exams are worth 100 points each.

Film Paper. We will watch the documentary 49 Up, which features interviews of people about their lives. These individuals were interviewed every seven years from the time they were seven years old. Now they’re 49. You are to write a paper on the film, showing how the film portrays human development by linking the film to theory or research in developmental psychology. You have a good deal of latitude in deciding how to approach this paper. Do this:
• Start by choosing the interviewee(s) and the topics you want to explore in your paper. For instance, you may choose to write about one, two, or a group of the interviewees. You might describe how that person or those individuals developed over time, linking their youth to their later development (perhaps covering individual traits and interests and/or social environments and/or other life circumstances). Or you might analyze a particular social factor that differed for the interviewees, like gender or socio-economic status in childhood or adolescence, in terms of its effects on development.
• Then, pick one or two (at most) developmental theories or principles or bodies of research, and use those ideas to show how the interviewees developed over time, from childhood to middle age.
• I'm looking for a well-organized paper that begins with a clear, concise introduction that states the main point or theme(s) of the paper. The introduction should briefly describe the main insight or claim of your paper in the overall. The rest of the paper should explain and illustrate that point. Also, be sure to convey how the individual character(s) experienced their own lives, as they described it. Don't make quick judgments about who they are from the standpoint of a careless observer.
• Don't summarize or describe the psychological theories or the film's structure or characters. Assume I know all that.
• If you have any questions about how to approach this task, please ask. This project is designed to strengthen your ability to think about and describe people’s lives in a way that is conceptually clear and well organized. The paper should be 4-5 pages, double-spaced, and is due in class Wednesday, Dec. 10. This paper is worth 100 points.

Optional: Research Paper. This paper requires you to form and communicate an idea or perspective on a specific aspect of development in childhood or adolescence. This idea or perspective must be well reasoned and firmly grounded in research. How to choose a topic: You are encouraged to pick a topic of personal interest to you that relates somehow to developmental psychology from birth through adolescence. You are also encouraged to start by thinking broadly and creatively about your own personal interests—the topic need not be a “textbook” topic—and only then look for some tie to development. If you want help coming up with a topic that interests you or refining your topic, let me know. How to find research articles: This paper is to be based on 3 articles that report on empirical research and that appear in academic, peer-reviewed journals (not newspapers, magazines, websites, etc). You may use only academic articles that either (1) present original research or (2) present a statistical meta-analysis of original research from various articles. Thus, you may not use purely theoretical articles, literature-review articles that do not present original research or statistical meta-analyses, commentaries, or other essay-type articles, even if they appear in peer-reviewed, academic journals. Use PsycINFO or another of the library’s search engines. How to write the paper: Later in the semester, about a month before this paper is due, we will spend an entire class period explaining and talking about how to do this paper (make sure you attend; it's a difficult assignment). In a nutshell, you are required to use a rigid structure to organize your paper. (This forces you to pour your creativity into the ideas, not the organization of the paper.) This structure will help you organize your thoughts in a way that is required for scientific writing—plus it provides a good basic structure for thinking systematically and for writing about fact-based opinions in general. The sections of the paper are: (1) introduction (which briefly states the main point of the paper), (2) summaries of the three articles (each one separately; each including a summary of the article’s main purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions), and (3) integration (which compares and contrasts the articles as well as elaborates on the main point of the paper). The grading key gives more detail (download it!). The paper should be 4-5 pages, double-spaced. Remember to give yourself enough time for this project: You will need to have a very well-organized paper in order to cover the necessary ground in such a short paper without sacrificing substance. I strongly recommend having your topic and articles chosen a few weeks before it is due. Be sure to include the first page of each article with your paper; it should have the article's abstract on it. Due in my office no later than Noon, Friday, Dec. 19. Be sure to download the grading key (though don’t think this covers everything that we’ll cover in the class devoted to how to do this paper). Finally, download a description and examples of how to format citations and references in APA style.
Link to PsycINFO
Download:
• Grading key
• Examples of citations and references in APA style

Note on plagiarism. Plagiarism is grounds for getting 0 points (not just an F) on any assignment (see UD’s policy on plagiarism and its penalties on page 3 of the Student Handbook). So be very careful. If you have any questions, ask. Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty that I take very seriously.

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Assistance. Please let me know if you would like any form of help or accommodations in this class. Feel free to call or email me for an individual appointment, or stop by during my office hours. UD asks that we state the following: To request reasonable accommodations due to disability, please contact LEAD: Disability Services in the LEAD office in the Learning Teaching Center, LTC 023, 229-2066. If you have a Self-Identification form indicating that you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodations, please present it to me so that we may discuss your needs.

Attendance. While you will not be graded for attendance, students find it very difficult to do well on my exams if they miss classes, since my exams are based not on the memorization of facts but on the ability to integrate information—a skill we develop in class.

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Course Schedule (Revised 9-22)
Note: For almost all chapters, only certain sections are assigned. Download readings list for chapters.

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