SPEC 607 - Comparative Development ECSE

Credits 3
This course explores both typical and atypical child development with a significant focus on cognition and language and the relationships between the two systems. Candidates will learn to demonstrate applied knowledge of typical and atypical child development, understanding young children's strengths and challenges across developmental (i.e., language and communication, social-emotional, cognition, adaptive/self-help, and motor) and curricular domains. The course presents language as a social pragmatic process and communication as a complex system which impacts behavior, performance, and quality of life. Candidates will demonstrate knowledge of children's language development across disabilities and the life span including communication skills, social pragmatics, the hierarchy of brain based learning skills (e.g. executive functioning), and vocabulary/semantic development as they relate to the acquisition of academic knowledge and skills. Candidates will explore early childhood curricula and approaches, including their alignment to the California Infant/Toddler and Preschool Learning Foundations, and learn age and developmentally appropriate purposes, characteristics, and uses of different types of assessment (e.g., authentic, play-based, dynamic, functional behavior assessment, family interviews, diagnostic, progress-monitoring, observational, and performance).
Take SPEC 601, SPEC 684A, SPEC 684B
May not be audited.