EPSY 248: Human Development and Learning

Scaffolding, Engagement, Collaboration

Course Description

This course covers cognitive, socio-emotional, and personality development throughout the lifespan (with emphasis on birth through early adulthood) as influences on the learning process. It includes analysis of theories, empirical research, and current issues in human development and learning as applied to school learning.

Working with children, adolescents, and their families requires knowledge of physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. This course is designed to provide students with foundational knowledge of human development and learning that inform the practice of school psychology. Typical and atypical development is explored.

Learning Outcomes / Course Objectives:

At the end of this course, students will:

Demonstrate knowledge of theories, research, and issues in human development.
- Show their understanding of theories, research, and issues in human development by summarizing or explaining them in various class assignments.
Demonstrate knowledge of theories, research, and issues in human learning.
- Show their understanding of theories, research, and issues in human learning by summarizing or explaining them in various class assignments.
Demonstrate the ability to apply human development and learning theory/research to the practice of school psychology.
- Apply human development and learning theory/research to the practice of school psychology (specifically various case scenarios and assignments).
Demonstrate awareness of the cultural/environmental variables that influence human learning and development.
- Examine human learning and development from cultural and social justice frameworks.

First year graduate students in the Sac State MA/Ed.S. School Psychology Graduate Program take this course in the first semester of their graduate training. This course is required for graduation from our program and is also required by our certification body, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). Typically 17 - 23 students enroll in this course and the number of students is based don't he number of students accepted in each graduate cohort. The course is delivered partially in a traditional lecture style with numerous activities (individual and group) throughout.

Overview of the Redesign Project

One of the primary assignments of this course is the creation of Developmental Health/History Questionnaire (DHQ). In this assignment, students are asked to generate questions based on various domains of human development from pregnancy and birth until early adulthood, the purpose being to inform a special education assessment or a counseling case. This assignment is a required capstone assignment that goes into the graduate portfolio of all graduate students who aim to graduate with an MA or Ed.S. in School Psychology. All goals align with our college and university's mission of supporting students in developing their competence as antiracist individuals through the acquisition of knowledge about diverse communities (which is also our national association's practice standard 2.7). The collaboration aspect is aligned with one of our national association's practice standard 2.2 consultation and collaboration. Finally, these changes also support students in adjusting to the rigorous expectations of graduate school.

1. 1. Scaffolding: The first element of this assignment that I redesigned was the connection between the material taught in class and the assignment itself. Previously, students passively absorbed the lecture content from September until the end of October and were asked to turn in the assignment at the end. With this particular re-design, some of the lecture materials were explicitly framed as examples of questions students could generate and the instructor provided students with prompts and opportunities to brainstorm questions related to the human development topics in the middle of the lecture. Students were then given structured time at the end of class to come up with the questions they would be submitting. At this time, they were able to receive feedback from me, as opposed to before, when they would not receive any feedback.
  2. Engagement and Collaboration: Previously, I left it up to students to meet on their own outside of class and split up the assignment as they wanted. I realized that this led to unequal involvement and quite haphazardly written questionnaires and papers. As such, I left time at the end of every class for students to engage in the material, talk to each other about their understanding of the content, and then collaborate right then and there to generate and submit their questions to me.
  3. Time Management: One critical piece of feedback I have received about this assignment was that students felt rushed when turning it in. Although they were told from September onward that the assignment was due at the end of October, it appeared that many students continued to leave the entire assignment, which integrates nearly 7 weeks of course material into a large product, into the last week of class before the due date. Furthermore, I also found that my grading load was considerably higher and I was receiving assignments that were not aligned with my expectations and also showed me gaps in student knowledge about the course material. Accordingly, I created three turn-in deadlines before the final turn-in. As mentioned above, students were given in-class time to work on questions that aligned with the lecture topic from that day. Every two weeks they were required to turn in questions to me, which allowed me to grade and guide students in the right direction if it appeared that there were learning gaps. Students found this structure far easier to navigate than having everything due at the end without feedback.

Assessment of the Redesign Project

This table shows three ways I assessed my course redesign.
Sample of Student Worked Turned in at First Turn-In Deadline	Addition of three turn-in deadlines prior to final paper turn in	Fall 2022 course evaluations compared to fall 2023 course evaluations
This is an image reflecting the collaborative work students engaged in during the second half of class. You can see that they quoted the textbook we use as well as the lecture slides from that day's lecture.	Image reflecting multiple turn-in deadlines across the semester leading up to the Final Project and Paper.	Fall 2022 Course Evaluations Fall 2023 Course Evaluations

Reflection

I am really excited by how positive the changes from my re-design appeared to be. The successes were not only visible in my ratings, but I also found that having the work time right after lecture for students to connect the content of their work to their DHQ assignment showed me that learning was taking place and that, ultimately, students were connecting the course content to our field. One of my major concerns after reading my course reviews from Fall of 2022 was that students did not see the point of much of the topics in the class, with many students writing in that there was "extra" or "pointless" information. This semester, I did not get any comments of that nature. Furthermore, I felt that the students were less stressed in the weeks leading up to the final assignment turn in, and throughout, grading was much easier to accomplish given that I had to grade earlier and in smaller chunks.

One of the major challenges that I found in this course was that although the quality of the questionnaire portion of the assignment was much better than last year and showed a higher level of content comprehension and engagement, because I did not ask students to turn in a formal version of their questions (e.g., in complete sentences with APA formatting), I encountered numerous writing challenges in the final assignment. These writing challenges included APA formatting, sentence structure, major and minor typos and grammatical issues, and flow and organizational issues, all of which seriously impacted the quality and understandability of the final assignment for many students. As such, I'm hoping to perhaps incorporate more writing activities throughout the semester to be able to identify the students who may need more support with writing; I have also considered asking students to continue using the turn-in deadlines and use compelte sentences with correct citation style, rather than accepting outlines and bulletted information.

Overall, I am quite pleased with how my re-design turned out!

Faculty Biography

This table includes my faculty biography.
	Dr. Sruthi Swami is a second year Assistant Professor in the School Psychology Ed.S. Program within the College of Education at California State University, Sacramento. She completed her Ph.D. In Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and completed her doctoral internship with the Dallas Independent School District in Texas with a focus on school-based mental health services and providing services from an integrative health perspective at the district youth and family therapy centers. Her research focuses on racism and discrimination in school systems, motivation and engagement, and Asian American youth mental health.

**Program Sponsors**
	This work was supported by: Sacramento State Anchor Initiative Sacramento State Academic Affairs - Center for Teaching and Learning