Child Psychology

Child Psychology

The role of a child psychologist often involves working with a range of clients, from infants and toddlers to children and teens – though sometimes they specialise in working with a particular age group. Child psychologists help to understand, prevent, diagnose and treat developmental, cognitive, social and emotional issues.

If you are keen to know more about the mental, social and emotional development of children from birth through to adolescence, then this is the perfect course for you. Child psychology examines changes in motor skills, cognitive development, language acquisition and identity formation.

This in-depth course will provide insight into the psychological changes that a child goes through from infancy through to their teenage years. Beyond the fundamental knowledge of child development, this child psychology course will also provide an essential overview of why children behave the way they do.

This Level 4 Child Psychology Certificate is an essential resource for anyone working with children, those who intend to take up a counselling career and parents that would like to better understand their own child’s development.

How does the course work?

Once enrolled, you will be given access to the course materials and our virtual learning platform, where you will find learning resources that are educational, interactive and easy to follow. Everything you will need to complete this online child psychology course is included in the course content and price.

What’s more, you will have access to support from our friendly and knowledgeable tutors, via phone, email or through our online platform. Further advice and guidance is also available through a hub of like-minded learners who you can connect with over the virtual portal.

A great deal of flexibility is offered with distance learning, but self-motivation and discipline are essential to your achievement. However, with the support of our dedicated tutors and great student network, you will find your feet in no time.

Each lesson will be followed by a question paper that needs to be completed and returned to your tutor. You should allow at least 1 - 2 hours of study to complete each question paper.

Modules

Module One major developmental issues

Unit One: The first year of life

• Infant reflexes; Social development during the first year of life including the social smile and onset of fear of strangers.

Unit Two: The formation of attachments

• Imprinting; Attachment (Bowlby) including cross-cultural studies; Harlow and surrogate mothers; Relevance of animal studies in child development.

Unit Three: Consequences of breakdowns in attachments

• Maternal deprivation; Implications of theories of attachment and maternal deprivation when placing children with surrogates.

Unit Four: The home, family and school

• Group vs family care and studies of effects of maternal employment and father absent families; Importance of peers and siblings.

Unit Five: Basic principles of research methods

• Nature and purpose of research, what is an experiment, supporting and refuting hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, control of variables, standardised instructions and procedures, methods of sampling, design of investigations.

Unit Six: The development of visual pperception

• Introduction to the nature/nurture debate on visual perception; Fantz - form perception; Gibson and Walk - depth perception; how the physiology of the human visual system helps us judge depth and distance; Bower - size constancy; animal experiments on early sensory deprivation.

Unit Seven: The development of language and ccommunication

• Development of non-verbal communication in humans, gestures etc; comparisons with non-human primates; outline of language development in humans; including naturalistic observational in humans; including naturalistic observational studies and criticisms of these; Innate and reinforcement theories.

Unit Eight: Intelligence and intelligence testing

• Definitions of intelligence; mental age and IQ; Tests of intelligence; Advantages and disadvantages of IQ testing.

Unit Nine: The nature / nurture debate in the study of intelligence

• Twins studies; stability of IQ; Are early experiences decisive for later development?

Unit Ten: Data collection and interpretation

• Tables and histograms, correlation and scattergrams; Mean; Range; Drawing conclusions from data.

Module Two:  The child as an individual

Unit Eleven: How Children Think

• Piaget's theory of cognitive development; including studies of egocentrism and criticisms of his work.

Unit Twelve: Learning Theory - How behaviour is acquired

• Learning and conditioning - classical conditioning and operant conditioning; including explanations of extinction, discrimination and generalisation; positive and negative reinforcement; Social Learning Theory and criticisms.

Unit Thirteen: Freud's psychodynamic theory - An alternative approach

• Personality structure, 5 stage theory, criticisms.

Unit Fourteen: Moral development

• Definition in psychological terms; investigation of moral behaviour, moral feelings and moral judgement.

Unit Fifteen: The development of gender roles

• Sex-typing; Gender identity; Biological, social and cultural theories.

Unit Sixteen: Aggression in children

• Biological basis of aggression; Psychological theory and aggression; Aggression as a learned response;
• Imitation of aggression; viewing violence; Punishment for aggression; sex differences in aggression.

Unit Seventeen: Methods used in child development research

• Observational, Survey, Correlational, Experimental - advantages and disadvantages.

Unit Eighteen: Play

• The importance of play to learning;
• Piaget's theory of play; forms of play;
• Relevance of psychological theories to pre-school education; Play and learning in nursery schools; Play therapy.

Unit Nineteen: Learning in school

• Programmed learning and its relationship to learning theory - advantages and disadvantages; Discovery learning and its effectiveness.

Unit Twenty: Behaviour modification

• Explanation and examples; Relationship to learning theory; Points systems, Advantages and disadvantages.

Entry Requirements

The course has been designed to be accessible to people without prior knowledge of the subject or qualifications. Therefore, there are no entry requirements; all you need is access to a device with an internet connection.

The approximate amount of time required to complete this online course is 200 hours.

All course fees, inclusive of all payment plans including our Premium Credit Limited option, must be settled before certification can be ordered.

*You will have access to the course for 24 months.

At the end of this course successful learners will be given the option to receive a Certificate of Achievement from the Quality Licence Scheme and a Learner Unit Summary (which lists the components the learner has completed as part of the course).

Level 4 Child Psychology Certificate of Achievement

The course has been endorsed under the Quality Licence Scheme. This means that learndirect has undergone an external quality check to ensure that the organisation and the courses it offers, meet defined quality criteria. The completion of this course alone does not lead to a regulated qualification* but may be used as evidence of knowledge and skills gained. The Learner Unit Summary may be used as evidence towards Recognition of Prior Learning if you wish to progress your studies in this subject. To this end the learning outcomes of the course have been benchmarked at Level 4 against level descriptors published by Ofqual, to indicate the depth of study and level of demand/complexity involved in successful completion by the learner.

The course itself has been designed learndirect to meet specific learners’ and/or employers’ requirements which cannot be satisfied through current regulated qualifications. The Quality Licence Scheme endorsement involves robust and rigorous quality audits by external auditors to ensure quality is continually met. A review of courses is carried out as part of the endorsement process.

The Quality Licence Scheme is part of the Skills and Education Group, a charitable organisation that unites education and skills-orientated organisations that share similar values and objectives. With more than 100 years of collective experience, the Skills and Education Group’s strategic partnerships create opportunities to inform, influence and represent the wider education and skills sector.

The Skills and Education Group also includes two nationally recognised awarding organisations; Skills and Education Group Awards and Skills and Education Group Access. Through our awarding organisations we have developed a reputation for providing high-quality qualifications and assessments for the education and skills sector. We are committed to helping employers, organisations and learners cultivate the relevant skills for learning, skills for employment, and skills for life.

Our knowledge and experience of working within the awarding sector enables us to work with training providers, through the Quality Licence Scheme, to help them develop high-quality courses and/or training programmes for the non-regulated market.

*Regulated qualification refers to those qualifications that are regulated by Ofqual / CCEA / Qualification Wales

To view a sample of the Certificate of Achievement, please click here.

If you wish to build your career in child psychology, you could continue your training and education to become a child psychologist. After qualifying, you could find yourself working in schools, hospitals, mental health clinics and more, with an average salary of £33,000*/year. Another new and exciting opportunity in such a role could be to set up your own practice.

*Source: PayScale, Nov. 2019