Conference | 2024 NAEYC Annual Conference: “Children Are not Things to be Molded, but People to be Unfolded”

Participants will explore developmental cascades as a dynamic and interdisciplinary framework for understanding child development. Presenters will share how observing across domains and developmental layers reveals each child's unique growth path.

Description

Presented by: Zlata Stankovic-Ramirez (University of Texas at Dallas) & Danielle McLellan-Bujnak (Portland State University)
Duration: This training is equivalent to 0.1 CEUs
Access: 30 days; all sales are final.

The concept of "developmental cascades" offers a nuanced way to understand child development from an interdisciplinary view. Typically, child development has been thought of in a boxed manner, with separate stages following each other in a forward-moving and linear fashion. Further, although developmental stages do have a predictable order, children might spend a different amount of time at each stage of development; regardless of individual timelines, there can be no walking without standing first. As powerful as our traditional lenses might feel to us, children themselves are not aware of the limitations and expectations that our perspective superimposes on their development, and their development in fact unfolds through multilayered and complex interactions. Layers and levels of development where skills build on each other in a unique and interactive way are present in every child, and each child's unique path of healthy development follows this general unfolding, commonly known as developmental stages. The concept of developmental cascades offers a new lens for evolving our evidence-based perspective on the child's development through multiple domains and interrelated competencies, and using diverse observational tools facilitates this multimodal perspective on each child's development.

Unit

Unit may be available for this conference and may vary by country or institution. Please verify eligibility with NAEYC.