This is a required Foundation course. Theories, frameworks, perspectives and research address culturally sensitive understanding of human development and behavior. Effects of risks and protective factors, culture, and other environmental effects, such as poverty, on developmental milestones are addressed. The course’s content will include neurophysiologic development across the lifespan, starting with early childhood; the profound influence of the environment on these processes; implications for early prevention, treatment, policies, and services; identification, assessment, and treatment of developmental delays and neurodevelopmental disorders; processes critical to understanding human behavior and community risk and resilience for vulnerable populations. Typical development will be covered as well as atypical developmental patterns that are consistent with neurodevelopmental disorders. Processes critical to human behavior and risk and resilience for Hispanic children and family will be emphasized to understand individual or family behavior.
To practice accountably and effectively, social workers must be able to understand their clients and the presenting issues within their clients’ environmental, cultural, and developmental contexts. In supportive environments, individuals flourish as they progress through developmental stages and stage-salient tasks. Other environments, because of risk factors associated with them, are less supportive of well-being. Even so, brain plasticity provides humans with an amazing capacity to adapt to these less supportive, maladaptive environments, although these adaptations sometimes come at a great cost to the individual. Especially for young children, the costs to the developing brain of less adaptive environments are profound because their brains become organized around repeated experiences within these less adaptive environments. Neurophysiological changes and behaviors resulting from these earlier less adaptive environments are often conceptualized by clinicians as psychopathology or presenting problems of clients.
Understanding human development as a series of processes mediated by the brain within an environment-dependent context profoundly reframes not only our understanding of our clients and their presenting problems, but also how to intervene appropriately with clients and their environments. This different understanding of human development also suggests the critical importance of effective prevention programs and social policies that promote wellbeing, as well as interventions directed at changing the larger environments of individuals. The knowledge gained in this course will allow social workers not only to better understand, contextualize, and assess clients and their presenting problems, but also to develop more appropriate interventions, prevention programs, or policies for working with or for the benefit of clients and for the necessary environments to support human well-being. Typical development will be covered as well as atypical developmental patterns that are consistent with neurodevelopmental disorders. Processes critical to human behavior and risk and resilience for Hispanic children and family are emphasized to understand individual or family behavior.
- Teacher: Gregory Gibbons