Foreign Perspectives

The Child Development course has what’s called a “seen question” on the exam paper which is sort-of a misnomer. Yes, they’ve given us the actual question that’ll be asked but it really more of a project than a simple question to answer in that we’ve to research the topic and provide a coherent answer citing research evidence to backup that answer.

That wouldn’t be too bad (says he, not having done it yet!) but the first hurdle is that there are five very different topic areas which we need to choose between first. Going by the study guide that choice should only take a day but that only works if you’ve a strong preference for one of the topics or a dislike for four of them and otherwise you could easily find yourself reading through quite a chunk of stuff just to make that choice.

In practical terms, I found it relatively easy to eliminate three of the topics. The legal one sounds interesting in principle but highlights right at the off that it contains quite upsetting material on child sexual abuse so doesn’t sound like something that would be pleasant to work on to me. The education one is very much a “for teachers” topic and doesn’t grab me. The health psychology one just sounded like a lot of marketing drivel. Which leaves the ones on autism and specific learning difficulties.

I’d thought initially that it would be very much a toss-up between these two but the presentation of them made it quite an easy choice. In practical terms I think that, although the autism one would be very interesting, you’d really need to have some experience of the condition to be able to do it as it’s presented in what seems, to me, to be a very confusing way. To be fair, it’s trying to show what autism is like to those with that affliction but it just served to confuse me as to where it was going with the topic.

Which leaves me with specific learning difficulties and that’s the option that I’ll be running with.

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