All observations that are carried out on children should be ‘objective’. According to the Oxford online dictionary objective means that a person or their judgement should not be influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts – in other words, the observations should be unbiased. You should always be non-judgemental about the child and base your observation from only what you have seen on that specific day, not taking any past events into consideration – it is important that all children are treated fairly and equally to make the observation valid (based on the truth – Collins English dictionary) it is essential to make observations valid to increase objectivity.
The opposite of objective is subjective. The Oxford online dictionary defines subjective as a person or their judgement is based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions. In brief, this means that you are heavily bias towards your own feelings, which can result in you being judgemental of a child – for example you could base your observation around your personal expectations of that child’s behaviour, judging from past events – this would make the observation inaccurate, biased and invalid.
When observing children, it is important to reduce bias (a concentration on or interest in one particular area or subject – The Oxford online dictionary) to ensure that you make your observation valid and therefore, objective. Gender bias is still prominent in childcare settings, but not as much as it used to be. An example of reducing gender bias is by organising a group activity, in which you select an equal amount of boys and girls to participate in a group activity, by doing so you are not showing preference of a gender. A lot of p...
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...e, around December, most settings will start to make Christmas cards, decorations and will be focusing on the Nativity story in Literacy – not all children will celebrate Christmas or even understand the concept of it. To make Christmas based activities suitable for all children the practitioner could change the title of the activities to ‘festive’ or ‘winter’ – that way all children will feel included and not discriminated against. Practitioners could also tell children different stories of how religious festivals began, for example the Diwali or Hanukah stories. This will also be a good chance for children to get to know information of different cultures.
As you can see, you need to take a lot of factors into consideration when observing children. By doing so, you are likely to result in a clear, well constructed, valid and most importantly; objective observation.
Having worked as a rehab aide in an outpatient clinic, my pediatric observation experience was completely different from what I am used to seeing. The therapist I observed was Allie Ribner who works at All Children’s Child Development and Rehab Center. Each session was completely different from one another for the session was geared towards the goals of the child and families. I found this to be a great learning experience for I saw a wide variety of different treatments and age range from 14 months to 15 years old.
Nontraditional gender socialisation can help the child develop a more complete understanding of their personality, that takes both their feminine traits and masculine traits into consideration. This can be illustrated by Jeremy telling his mother that he got to be “a complete person” (Bem, 1998, p. 190), when asked how his upbringing enhanced his life. Further this type of parenting allows the child to be more analytical of traditional gender roles and how they might be present and potentially affect their lives. This can make them more aware of them, and could help them avoid or fight against negative effects that might arise from their presents. This can often be advantageous. Bem educated her children about traditional gender roles and their negative aspects, like sexism, and through this allowed them to have the tools to identify them early on, like Emily did in nursery school (Bem, 1998, p. 119-120). When children are being educated about traditional gender roles and their disadvantages they have an easier time identifying them later on and possibly fighting
First of all I would like to explain why the child observation is important for social workers. It is important because it focus on the problems that arise when a child‘s situation is not taken seriously and consequently have harsh consequences for both worker and child (Climbié Report, 2002). Observation is something that leads to formation of hypotheses and gives new insights about the child’s world. Child observations assist social workers understand, through assessments, the children’s communication between them and their carer or parents. The aim of the observation is to understand the child and his/her world (Briggs, 1992).
Context: It is the early month of December and the students have been already reading, writing and hearing about Christmas in Canada. To date, they have already shared their cultural practices during Christmas, if any, and are now interested in the Canadian culture. They are familiar with the concept of Christmas and some key terms, like Santa Clause, Christmas tree, etc. The length of this class is two hours with one fifteen minute coffee break, after one hour.
This paper will explore my findings of my observation of a young boy, age 28 months, named Jax. Jax is fun little man and happens to be my nephew. I will discuss the attributes and characteristics of Jax that I witnessed in the few hours that I had observed him. Starting with motor development skills, I observed that Jax is a very favorable walker. He is well coordinated, and loves to run. Still, just like any two-year-old, he still stumbles frequently. He loves to play with his toys and can pick up and grasp his toys well. He is great at maneuvering his toys and putting them where he wants them. I did notice that he did favor his right hand regularly. Jax did love to throw things, and catch them as well. However, he seemed to be a bit better at catching things, more so than he was at throwing
(2012) examined gender-typed play across social contexts in order to examine if the social context influences a child’s gender-typed activity choice. The varying social contexts they accounted for were if the child was playing with boys, girls, a mixture of the two, or the teacher (Goble et al., 2012). This is important to consider because the frequency at which each type of social context is present will potentially have an impact on the rate of various gender-typed activities (Goble et al., 2012). Research shows that children prefer to play with children of their same gender who engage in the roughly the same amount of gender-typed activities as they do (Martin et al., 2013). This pattern leads to children spending most of their time playing in groups that are sex-segregated (Martin et al., 2013). Due to this, there is the potential that children may engage more often in certain gender-typed activities than if they were playing with someone of the opposite gender (Goble et al. 2012). To determine if this statement is in fact true it is necessary to observe preschool age children and record the type of play they engage in, and who their playmates are; this is precisely what the present research represents and what Goble et al. (2012)
Martin, Karin A., 1998. “Becoming a Gendered body: Practices of Preschools” American Sociological Assosciation (4): 510.
Sending a child to a gender based school, is a very big decision to make. The decision is so big, that looking at what research has to say about the topic could alter one’s decision to send their child to a gender based school. “Educators must apply different approaches in teaching make, and female students” (Gurian). This is said by Gurian, because he also believes that boys and girls learn differently. “Social pressures can be gentler and your child can learn at his own pace” (Kennedy).
It may be important to observe a child but at the same time it may mislead you into being judgmental, too soon. For instance, if you observe a child misbehaving, not getting along with the other children or talking back to the teacher, you might get the impression that he/she is a 'bad' child and you might treat and act differently with that particular child.
The goal is to prevent substantial harm to the parents and the child. There should not be discrimination
This observation took place in the children's home. As a playroom they used the living room because that is where all their toys are. For my observation I used both the siblings and their mother. During the observation I was present including the children and their mother. I am not related to those children. I happened to meet them a couple of times because they are related to my boyfriend. I do not see the children frequently. I will see them only when my boyfriend's family will invite us to a family get together. I did not interact with the children at all, only the mother interacted with them.
Child development and growth observation can be quite fascinating considering the uniqueness of each child. As children grow, they normally develop and acquire new skills whether complex or not. The abilities experienced by each child progresses differently that is it depends on the nurturing given by the parent or guardian and on the characteristics that they inherit. Proper development and growth of the child occurs when basic needs are provided by the reliable adult guardians, including such things as love, food, encouragement, shelter and warmth. The essay evaluates child development and growth through observation conducted by myself on my nephew. The essay will include physical development, general health, emotional development,
Recently, I went to The Happy School, a preschool in my hometown of Smallville, California, to pass the morning with the students there. In the time I spent there, the children, ages 3 to 5, engaged in unstructured play, and sat in a circle for calendar time and reading aloud. The preschool is primarily child-centered in terms of its organization, meaning it incorporates a lot of child directed activity, and less structured, or adult directed, learning (Berk, 2008). I watched the group of about twenty children with the intention of studying them as a whole, but I found myself compelled to watch two children in particular, Addison and Jack, because they displayed particularly intriguing behavior. (p187) THESIS, what behavior, theories etc.
Observation is important as the practitioner can find out what the child is interested in and what motivates them to learn alongside their progress and how they behave in certain situations, additionally at the same time it identifies if children need assistance within certain areas of learning or socially (DCSF, 2008). Furthermore the observations check that the child is safe, contented, healthy and developing normally within the classroom or early years setting, over time the observations can be given to parents as they show a record of progress which helps to settle the parent and feel more comfortable about their child’s education. Observations are not only constructive within learning about an individual child, they can be used to see how different groups of children behave in the same situation and how adults communicate and deal with children’s behaviour (Meggitt and Walker, 2004). Overall observations should always look at the positives of what children can complete within education and not look at the negatives and all observations should become a fundamental part of all practitioners work alongside reflection (Smidt, 2009).
Sandstrom, M., Stier, J., & Sandberg, A. (2013). Working with gender pedagogics at 14 Swedish preschools. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 11(2), 123-132