Advanced Certificate in Youth Development and Counselling Course Guide

This course will provide an overview of child psychology, including but not limited to the nature and nurture influences on a child’s development, why correlation rather than cause is used in the study of children’s behaviour and the key issues in studying children.

This course will provide an introduction to key theories and issues within the study of newborn psychology and development, and will include but not be limited to theories of newborn development, genetic and environmental factors (nature and nurture) that can influence a child’s personality and the effect the perinatal environment can have on a child’s development.

This course will provide an introduction to the early development of children before they acquire language, including but not limited to sensory discrimination and the various types of discrimination, the infant states psychologists observe in research and the concept of Habituation.

This course will provide an introduction to ways infants and young children learn, and a range of factors that can influence their learning. It will include but not be limited to the four basic ways of learning and how they can be practically applied to a child’s learning, the roles of reinforcement, consequences and punishment and the factors that contribute to learned helplessness.

This course will provide an overview of how healthy social and emotional development can be studied and supported in children, including but not limited to the emotions displayed at different stages of an infant’s development, theories on mother-child attachment and the perceptual recognition approach.

This course will provide an introduction to psychological understandings of reasoning skills and information processing, and how these skills apply to children’s learning. It will include but not be limited to the different types of play and why they are important, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and the significance of memory capacity in cognitive development.

This course will provide an introduction to a range of theories about how children first learn to speak and understand language, including but not limited to the different language acquisition theories, the development of speech during the first two years of a baby’s life and techniques that can aid the development of language in babies.

This course will provide an introduction to a range of influences on the development of intelligence in children, and will include but not be limited to the influence nature and nurture has on intelligence, approaches to defining intelligence and the impact parental influences can have on intelligence.

This course will provide an introduction to the beginnings of social cognition in children, including but not limited to key concepts of social cognition, the development of egocentrism in children and how the development of social cognition is reflected in friendships children form.

This course will provide an introduction to the ways that children learn right and wrong, covering various approaches to the psychological study of morality. It will include but not be limited to the difference between power-assertive discipline and inductive discipline, strategies designed to encourage altruistic behaviour and a look at aggression.

This course will take a look at a range of influences on the development of sexuality in children, and will include but not be limited to Freud’s key principle on child sexuality and psychosexual development, gender identity vs sex role identity, sexual behaviour displayed by children and a look at abuse.

This course will provide an introduction to the impact of socialisation on the healthy development of children, including but not limited to the influence and effects parental behaviour and family structure can have on a child’s development, common disciplinary methods, the level of influence siblings have on a child’s development as well as the influence of peer interaction on socialisation.