Students of the social, developmental and educational sciences can greatly benefit from a hands-on approach to learning about human growth and development. These types of experiential projects typically involve working directly with a specific age group over a period of time. This does not mean that the students must participate in a full semester practicum or internship. Instead, it is possible to set up mini-teaching experiences where the students visit a classroom or childcare center for a week or two. Students can keep a learning journal or write a project report that ties what they observe and do during the project to accepted educational, growth and developmental theory.
One simple way for beginning students to learn about human growth and development is to create a lifespan timeline project. Starting at conception, students can either make an actual timeline out of a long sheet of construction paper or create a written time ordered list. This project must include key developmental changes in cognitive, physical, social and emotional areas. Additionally, include sub-areas or more specific content such as language milestones and literacy development. For example, at one year of age infants can typically crawl forward, pull up to a standing position, use a pincer grip, babble and say simple words such as "mama," find hidden items and imitate gestures of others.
A literature review provides students with the opportunity to better understand a specific aspect of human development or a theoretical approach. Students can either choose a topic of interest or review literature on an assigned theme such as literacy development, physical growth in the early years, social development and schooling or a similar theme. Use a university library system and academic journals online to find authoritative and accepted sources. The review itself is a summary of the published content on the chosen subject, providing interpretations of the theory or research. All literature in this written paper should be current to at least within the past few years and come from a respected, peer reviewed academic journal.
Faculty supervised research projects can help a human growth and development student to better understand concepts and theories as well as contribute to the field in general. Students can choose a topic that focuses on a subject that is meaningful to them or factors into their particular area of study such as artistic development in preschoolers, collaborative learning in middle school, the development of self-regulation in young children or other related areas. These projects need not be full scale studies, but instead can be semester long mini-projects using a small sample size. This type of project gives the student the opportunity to formulate a hypothesis/research question, practice research methods, interview participants, make observations, analyze data and write a report.