Transparent Assignment Developmental Context Assignment
Developmental Context Assignment
Purpose: This assignment is designed to help you identify cultural, economic, political, historical contexts that impact children’s development. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory views the individual as developing within a complex system of contexts and relationships affected by multiple, nested layers of the surrounding environment (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem).
Skills: Through this assignment, you will develop a number of skills:
- Write a six-paragraph essay
- Use critical thinking skills and communicate your ideas in a clear and organized manner
- Finding, citing and summarizing research from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
- Citing and summarizing textbook information
Knowledge: This assignment will help you gain the following knowledge:
- Apply theoretical knowledge to your own life experience
- Identify personal cultural, economic, political, historical contexts that impact your life
Task:
Imagine that you are a parent of a 4-year-old child, living in the US today. Please use your textbook and at least one outside reference (a peer-reviewed scholarly journal) to identify how your personal culture, socioeconomic status, political/government/laws, and generation could affect your child.
- Using this information write a six-paragraph essay explaining how these factors might influence your child (use the template provided below).
- Make sure you include at least 3 different meaningful quotes (for example, referencing a definition is not a meaningful quote) from the book with page numbers and at least one quote from the outside reference.
Follow this template for your essay:
Paragraph One-Introduction and explanation of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory in your own words.
Paragraph Two- How the child’s various cultures affect their development.
Paragraph Three-How the family’s socioeconomic status may affect the child.
Paragraph Four-How what is happening in State or Federal politics/government/laws could affect the child.
Paragraph Five-How the time or generation that this child is currently living in would affect his development.
Paragraph Six- Conclusion.
Use this outline to help you identify information you’ll use in your essay
- Your Child’s culture (make sure you list all of the possible cultures that may effect this child)
- Textbook Connections:
- Ideas for outside research terms:
- Your family’s economic or socioeconomic level
- Textbook Connections:
- Ideas for outside research terms:
- Today’s political climate
- Textbook Connections:
- Ideas for outside research terms:
- Significant historical factors (growing up during in this time in history/being in this generation)
- Textbook Connections:
- Ideas for outside research terms:
Criteria for Success: Your essay will be scored using the rubric below; please be sure to read it carefully. You can determine the completeness of your essay by checking off each criterion.
When I use the rubric to score your essay, the purpose is to show you where your essay was strong, and where it needs improvement.