ÇANKAYA UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

SYLLABUS

PSY 222 – DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY II

Spring 2014

Instructor: Assist. Prof. Aslı GÖNCÜ

E-mail: agoncu@cankaya.edu.tr

Office: R101 (The Chairperson’s Office)

Office Hours: By appointment

Lecture Hours and Class: Monday 11:40-13:30 (HA03), Tuesday 15:40-17:30 (HA03)

The Text:

Berk, L. (2010). Development Through the Lifespan (5^th edition).  Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

The Aim of the Course: This course introduces the field of developmental psychology to psychology majors. Developmental psychology is a broad area which encompasses physical, cognitive, emotional and social development through the lifespan. This course is designed to provide students knowledge about physical, social, cognitive and emotional development between early childhood period and death.

More specifically, this course aims to enable students to differentiate between the developmental views promoted by the concepts of tabula rasa, storm and stress and inventions as contrasted by the life span perspective, to differentiate between normative age, normative history and non-normative life events; to distinguish between context and culture; to define development; to differentiate between biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional processes; to describe the nature vs. nurture controversy; to distinguish between continuity and discontinuity orientations of development; to define maturation; to acquire knowledge about early/middle-late childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle adulthood and late adulthood as well as death and bereavement processes.

Course Format: Four lectures are planned to be reserved for each assigned chapter. The lectures will be supplemented by videos, case and research exercises as well as real-life examples. Regular attendance to the lectures and reading the assigned material before the class are strongly encouraged since both of them will seriously help you get the most you can from the class. You can also feel free to ask questions and participate in class discussions.

Assessment: There will be two midterms and a final exam which covers the chapters covered before the first midterm and after the second midterm. The exams will include fill-in-the-blanks, true-false or short essay questions which will cover the materials presented in the class and in the assigned readings. You will also have two assignments.

Grading:

1. Exam I                                                                                          25%                     

2. Exam II                                                                                        25%

3. Assignments                                                                                 15%

4. Final                                                                                                              35%

Assignments: Assignments are aimed to improve both your theoretical knowledge and practice experience in the field as well as your skills. You will also get feedback about your academic writing performance in English. These two assignments will be graded as your “Total Term Project”.  

Assignment 1 (5 points): In groups of two, students will prepare video sessions about the topics we are going to cover between Chapter 11 and 19.  You can feel free to be creative.

Assignment 2 (10 points): In groups of two, students will make a literature review about a topic from the list of topics that I am going to provide. You are expected to find at least four research articles and to write a paper including the hypotheses, the design of the experiments/studies and the main findings. The original part of your assignment will be the discussion section of your manuscript in which you will compare and contrast the theoretical background, methods, and results of the studies you will review. Your are also expected to make suggestions regarding future research on the topic.

TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE

Syllabus