To illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach helps to understand child development you will see how researchers from various disciplines and backgrounds study child development at Utrecht University. We will look, amongst other things, at the brain and motor development, cognitive, language and social-emotional development and all the factors that have an influence on development. In order to help you organize your thinking about this complexity you will learn more about the developmental systems approach and theories related to that. This implies that understanding development requires taking an interdisciplinary approach. Importantly, you will come to understand that processes within and between the various domains and levels of organization continuously interact to shape development. You will see that development can be studied in various domains and at various levels of understanding, from different angles and disciplines.
You will learn that child development is complex and is influenced by a surprisingly rich number of factors at many different levels of organization. In this course, we dive into the topic of child development.
