The purposeof studying children is to

learn as much as possible about the

child as an individual and to apply that
knowledge in predicting future
development and in influencing the
child to attain his/her greatest potential
as a fully functioning individual.

To accomplish these, we must learn the

reasons why the child behaves as he
does, the goals that he/she is trying to
attain and the feelings he/she has about
hi/her behavior. We should not focus on
the child exclusively; the interaction
between the child and the significant
persons in his/her environment is of
major importance too.

TOPICAL APPROACH

Focuses on the following aspects: a

childs physical development,
cognitive/language development, social
development, and personality
development.

AGE-RANGE APPROACH

Concentrates on the following phases of

childhood: prenatal (before birth),
infancy and toddlerhood (birth through
age 3 years), preschool (age 3 through
6), middle childhood (age 6 through 12),
and adolescence (age 12 years through
20).

ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

It considers the systems that surround

the child.

Microsystem includes a childs parents

and siblings, childcare provider and any
other person or object present in childs
everyday experiences.

Mesosystem it is made up of the

relationships between all those people
and objects that make up the childs
microsystem.

Exosystem consists of outside

organizations and institutions that affect
the childs experience such as churches,
the government and schools.

Macrosystem includes the overall

cultural, religious and philosophical belief
systems that guide the institutions in the
exosystem and thereby have an effect on
the child.

This focuses on the naturalistic

assessment, which addresses the
developmental functional skills that
facilitate a childs independence and
control of his or her environment. Tools
based on age-related sequence of
developmental milestones are designed to
assist practitioners in determining target
behaviors and intervention activities.

It is about naturalistic assessment

which draws from applied behavioral
analysis to describe the environmental
situations necessary for eliciting
desired behaviors. Discrete skills are
identified so that they can be observed,
measured and quantified.

Individualized child tests

The most common source of information

about childrens performances. Most
commonly used is a standardized, normreferenced instrument. These standardized
tests are sometimes very expensive which
an individual may not afford to acquire but if
the school/institution purchases these, these
could be of great help to a better
understanding of childrens performances.

Parent and teacher report/ratings

These are non-standardized test, that

reports regarding a childs skills, abilities,
motivation and behavior that can be very
useful information as a measure of
childs competencies, though at times
may be subjective especially those of
parents.

Work Samples

These are in form of performance

assessment because a childs
performance can be evaluated on the
things he finishes or completes. A
portfolio is a purposeful collection of a
childs works that records hid progress in
mastering a specific task or content area.

Research Methods

The common research methods are:

Literature searches
Talking with people during the initial stage
Focus group
Personal interview

Telephone surveys
Mail surveys
E-mail and internet surveys

Qualitative methods

Observation/s
Self-reports
- interview method
- self-report instrument
Clinical method or case study

Correlational
Experimental
Quasi-experimental

Longitudinal study involves studying

the same group of participants over a
particular period of time

Cross-sectional studies involved

studying groups of participants in
different groups at the same point in
time.