Please read through the assignment requirements carefully. Resubmission will not be accepted. The assignment should be submitted through the assignment link in D2L as a word document (NO PDF, please).
Assignment #2: Case Study of One Child’s Development within Family Context
(45 points)
The purpose of this assignment is to explore a child’s development within his or her family context, to detect potential risk factors or resilient/protector factors that are negatively or positively associated with the child’s development, and to look for resources and solutions to support the family. This project utilizes a case study approach designed to deepen your understandings of how family impacts child development, and how to draw community resources or design interventions to support and optimize development.
Part I (30 points): Case Study
– Select a family that fits into ONE of the following categories:
Single-parent headed
Low-income families, including Head Start families
Having a child with disabilities
Teen parents
Low maternal education
English as second language or comes from a different culture
Minority
One or both parents having severe medical conditions
Family enrolled in public assistance or in social welfare
Families with child abuse records
Grandparents are primary caregivers
Divorced families
Re-married families
(It is ok if the family you choose fits into several categories, e.g., a divorced family with a disabled child)
– Select ONE child within the family who is between 0-8 years old. The family might have more than one child, but you will only focus on one child.
– Conduct an interview with ONE PARENT (no need to observe the child in home or child care setting). Your goal is to collect data/information from the parent, and then use the data to write a paper about how ONE SPECIFIC family factor has impacted a child’s development. The examples of family factors that you can study include:
Parenting style
Parental stresses and depression
Parent involvement with learning
Parent-child relationship
Couple relationship
Sibling relationship
Parental expectations and values toward education
Family tradition and cultural backgrounds
Family values
REMEMBER, YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON ONLY ONE FACTOR (NO MORE THAN ONE!) and study in depth. The above is NOT an exclusive list of possible family factors that might impact child development. You also can decide your own topic and consult the instructor before you conduct the interview.
– You will need to come up a list of detailed interview questions BEFORE you conduct the interview with the parent. Your goal is to collect sufficient information about: (1) the family factor that you aim to study (e.g., parent-child attachment relationship); and (2) the child’s development in one specific developmental area (e.g., emotional development).
In your final paper, you are required to ANALYZE and CONNECT the family factor (e.g., attachment relationship) WITH the child’s development (e.g., emotional development), to discuss HOW that family factor has impacted the child’s development.
– Focus on ONLY ONE child developmental domain: social, emotional (focus on either social or emotional, but not both because these are still two distinct domains), physical, cognitive, or language development, and this domain should theoretically and hypothetically connect with the family factor that you choose to study. For example, if you decide to study “parenting” as the family factor, then the child development area that you might want to focus on is “social” OR “emotional”. If you decide to study “parent involvement in learning” as the family factor, then the child development area that you might want to focus on is “cognitive”.
– Write a coherent and integrative case study paper by addressing the following components:
A clear introduction of the family and the child (e.g., how old the mother is, what kind of work she does, how many children in the family);
A specification of your study focus;
The child’s developmental status within one area (give some specific details);
How the family factor you studied has impacted the child’s development in the specific area/domain that you focused on. The main task of the paper is to integrate and analyze the data you collected, and write a coherent paper about the possible mechanisms/ways that a certain family factor impacts the child.
Identify the family’s potential risks, difficulties, stressors, or protector factors that might impact the child’s development. For example, if you studied parent involvement, and you found through the interview that the parent had very low level of involvement with the child, then this low involvement is a risk factor for child’s development.
You will find that even the families that we interviewed are from disadvantaged background, some of the families might be doing perfectly well. Then in your interview and paper, please identify the protective factors that support the child’s development (please note that the factors should be still within your focus area, e.g., parenting).
In your paper, you can quote some of the parent’s original statements to support your arguments. But you cannot simply drop all statements from the parent into the paper. The quotation needs to be purposeful and meaningful.
– Attach a full list of your interview questions and at least one-page interview transcript (the questions and the parent’s actual answers; please TYPE UP) BY THE END of the paper. The parent’s answers are definitely more than one page, but I only want to see some examples answers. So, just one-page transcript would be good. Please give example answers to some KEY questions (not answers to the questions like “how old are you”).
VERY IMPORTANT: Please DO NOT put the whole interview questions and answers in the middle of the paper. This paper is a formal academic writing that involves analysis and integration of the data you collected from the interview.
Part II (15 points): Intervention Design
Design an intervention model that helps to specifically address the potential risks, difficulties, or stressors that you have identified through your case study of the child and his/her developmental environment.
If the child is developing well (you did not identify risk factors), then the intervention aims to further optimize his or her development. In other words, we are not just trying to look for the risks or challenges; if the child is doing well, then the intervention is to help the child do even better (even the families function well, they still could use more help). The intervention can be a curriculum design within child care setting or a community-based support program. Please specify the following components in your intervention plan:
What is the focus of the intervention? And why the intervention fits the family’s needs?
How the services will be delivered and by whom?
How long and how intensive the intervention will last?
How would you involve the child and his/her families?
REMEMBER: THE INTERVENTION NEEDS TO BE MATCHED WITH YOUR STUDY TOPIC. For example, if you studied about how parenting impacts the child’s social behaviors, then it is NOT OK for your intervention plan to focus on promoting child’s physical health! Your intervention should be about parenting behaviors and child’s social behaviors (e.g., parenting class, parent-child social group, and etc).
You can use various resources to help you design the intervention; or you certainly can adopt an existing intervention program (but it has to be fit with your study focus and cite appropriately).
The intervention plan is an integrated part of this final project, so write professionally and do NOT use bullet points to answer the above list questions.
Graphic layout of the assignment
Below are one EXAMPLE of how the study topic should be specified and the interview questions be framed:
1. Study topic: how parent’s involvement in learning impacts a four-year old’s cognitive development
2. Family factor: parent’s involvement in learning; Child development domain: cognitive
3. Example interview questions (not a full list, but just to give you some hints, and you certain should ask a enough number of questions)
Family background questions: How old is your child? Does your child go to child care? For how many hours during the day? What kind of job do you do? Who else can help you to take care the child on a regular basis?
Family factor questions: how does your work schedule look like? How much time do you spend with the child everyday? How often do you speak to the child’s teachers about how well he/she is doing in school? How often do you read to him/her? How often do you take the child to museum or library? How often do you sing songs or do home activities with the child? What kind of activities do you do with the child at home? What else do you do to promote the child’s cognitive development? Can you please give some examples? How often do you meet with the teacher and volunteer at the child’s classroom? How do you think your involvement with the child has impacted his/her learning?
Child development questions: how would you describe the child’s cognitive development? How is the child doing cognitively in comparison to his/her peers or children at his/her age? What did the teachers at child care say about the child’s cognitive development? Can you please give me some examples of the cognitive skills that the child has, such as counting, recognizing letters, math concepts (e.g., big vs. small; long vs. short), sorting things based on colors and shapes. Can the child understand well and can he/she speak well? Do you have any concerns about his cognitive development? What are his favorite activities that he likes to do?
Please organize your interview questions into THREE sets: basic family background, family factor, and child development. This will be helpful for you to come up relevant questions and it is easier for interview.
Grading Rubric:
Criteria Exceptional
(41-45) Good
(36-40) Meet the basic expectations
(28-35) Not meet the basic expectations
(below 28)
Case Study
(30 points) Provides a clear introduction of the child and the family; clearly outline the child’s developmental status within one area; tells a coherent story of child development within specific family dynamic contexts; have an in-depth reflection upon the family interview and how the family has shaped the child’s development Provides a clear introduction of the child and the family; clearly outline the child’s developmental status; tells a coherent story of child development; have a relatively focused reflection upon the family interviews and family impact Provides a clear introduction of the child and the family; gives out basic information of child development; tells a story of child development within contexts but might not connect child development with the impact coherently; have an accurate interpretation of the interview content The introduction of the child and the family is unclear; lack of description of child development; does not tell a complete story of child development within contexts; does not have an accurate understanding and interpretation of the interview content
Intervention Design
(15 points) The design specifically addresses the risk factors identified through the child study; the design is realistic, concrete, thoughtful, and reflects an ecological perspective The design specifically addresses the risk factors identified through the child study; the design is thoughtful but might not be specific enough The design broadly addresses the risk factors identified through the child study; the design is practical The design does not have a clear focus and does not address the risk factors identified through the child study; the design is unrealistic and hard to carry out
– The paper should not be less than 6 pages (double spaced, 12-point font, and 1-inch margins all around; NOT count the interview questions and the transcript).
– The paper needs to be typed up and follow APA style (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/; but do NOT need “abstract” page)
– NO grammatical errors! Please read through your writing carefully before you send in the paper. I will NOT accept revision, but I am more than happy to preview your interview questions and paper if it is necessary.
– Please submit the paper as a WORD document, so that I can add comments and edits directly in the paper.