Biological Psychological and Socioecological Factors that may Influence the Development and Learning of either Infants Toddlers or Young Children
Paper Instructions:
Critically discuss the biological, psychological and socioecological factors that may influence the development and learning of either infants, toddlers or young children.
In your discussion, consider the holistic nature of child development. Suggest two strategies that could support each of the developmental domains and link the suggested practices to a range of theories discussed in the Course.
(2000 words)
Course required readings must be used as well as additional literature to inform your assessment. Reference list must be attached.
Part Two
Essay
Critically discuss the biological, psychological and socioecological factors that may influence the development and learning or either infants, toddlers or young children. In your discussion, consider the holistic nature of child development.
Suggest two strategies that could support each of the developmental domains and link the suggested practices to a range of theories discussed in the Course.
Critically discuss the biological, psychological and socioecological factors that may influence the development and learning or either infants, toddlers or young children.
• Choose a specific age group – infants or toddlers or young children
• Discuss how a range of biological factors influence the development and learning of a specific age group.
• Then repeat this for psychological and socioecological factors for the same age group
• Section 3 of your Course Guide provides a good overview of these factors and there is a good resource in Section
3.4 Biological and Ecological Influences to support your discussions
In your discussion, consider the holistic nature of child development.
• Sections 1 and 2 of your Course Guide cover the concept of holistic development and the developmental domains
• You could explain what holistic development means and then discuss the interrelationship of development in the
different domains
Suggest two strategies that could support each of the developmental domains and link the suggested practices to a range of theories discussed in the Course.
• The ‘suggested strategies’ in the task should read as ‘suggested practices’.
• The suggested practices should be explained in light of the age group selected.
• Explain how each practice will support development in at least 3 domains (physical, cognitive, language, social,
emotional and spirituality)
• Support each practice with links to theories and perspectives covered in the course.
• Teaching strategies are specific ways a teacher uses to support children in their development. For example: the
scaffolding strategy for solving a puzzle or the modelling strategy for washing hands properly. Practices are broader
and include a range of more specific strategies – eg. developing relationships; supporting wellbeing and belonging,
child-centred environments; promoting social competence etc.
For each factor:
• What is the biological factor? Briefly explain to show your understanding and it would be
a good idea to provide a list of biological factors.
• What biological factors can influence the development and learning of the age group you
selected? Here choose one or two concepts. One example of a biological factor is health
and an aspect of health is nutrition. So, discuss what nutrition is and how it influences the
child’s development and learning
• What domain/development can you relate well to nutrition? Perhaps physical development.
So, you may want to focus specifically on gross motor skills. How does nutrition affect
cognitive and emotional development? Depending on the word count, you can discuss
more than one domain. Please remember it is better to discuss fully one aspect than try
to cover too many.
• How does the child’s physical development relate to the other domains (cognitive,
language, emotional, social and spirituality)? for example, when an infant is learning to
walk, how are the cognitive, language, social, emotional domains and spirituality
influenced or affected? When you answer this, you show an understanding of holistic
development. Please remember that it’s not necessary to make links to all the other
domains, only those that you can fully and clearly link to as it is better to discuss one or
two aspects fully and clearly than to try to cover too many. Depth of discussion is better.
• Also remember to focus in the learning within the domains ie. the skills, knowledge and
dispositions that children gain.
• Then repeat the same structure for the psychological and then the socioecological factors.
For each practice:
• Explain what the practice is.
• What does this practice look like for your selected age group?
• How will this practice support learning and development in the different domains for the
selected age group? (though in the task it says all domains, you have the option to just
discuss three domains)
• What theory can you best relate the practice to?
• Then repeat for the second practice
