Infants and Children - Vantage Learning Platform

Prenatal Through Middle Childhood

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Drives Student Engagement. An evidence-based learning design integrates text content with frequent multimedia activities and learning assessments to facilitate better student preparation, engagement, and learning retention.

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• Critical Thinking Checks and Chapter Quizzes provide summative assessments at the end of each chapter to measure progress and long-term retention.
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Ensures Student Accountability. Auto-graded assignments feed your gradebook while instructor reports complement your ability to track student activity, assignment completion, and learning objective mastery. These real-time analytics provide quick insights into individual and class performance for tailoring course instruction to help you address the needs of struggling students.

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KEY FEATURES OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN, NINTH EDITION

Thoroughly Engaging Writing Style

• Berk makes the study of child development both involving and pleasurable for students. Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood is written in an engaging, personal style — one that is highly accessible — and contains real-life human-interest stories. The author encourages students to relate what they read to their own lives. Stories and vignettes of real individuals, a Berk signature feature, open each chapter and continue throughout the text to illustrate developmental principles and teach through engaging narrative. This text "teaches while it tells a story."

Unparalleled, Up-to-Date Research

• Classic, contemporary, and cutting-edge theories and research are presented with unusual clarity. By providing an up-to-date and easily understood overview of the field, the text is unusually effective in strengthening students' understanding, retention, and application of what they have learned. This Ninth Edition offers more than 1,500 new research citations.

Exceptional Integration of Culture and Diversity

• Multicultural and cross-cultural material is presented not only in the text's research and in many positive and diverse examples, but also through attractive photos and figures, which enhance student interest and understanding. Cultural Influences boxes deepen the attention to culture threaded throughout the text and accentuate both multicultural and cross-cultural variations in development.

Appealing and Meaningful Applications

• Integrated throughout the text, appealing applications show students how the concepts they're learning relate to real-world situations. Applied features are relevant to students pursuing a variety of fields, including psychology, education, nursing and other health professions, sociology, anthropology, family studies, and social services. Applying What We Know tables provide practical real-life applications based on theory and research findings. Berk speaks directly to students as parents or future parents and to those pursuing diverse careers and areas of study. Look and Listen activities promote active learning, asking students to observe what real children say and do; to speak with or observe parents, teachers, or other professionals; and to inquire into community programs and practices that influence children.

Other Outstanding Pedagogical Features

• Several additional features support students' mastery of the subject matter, inspire critical thinking, and help students engage with information on child development and apply it to the real world.
  • Milestones tables summarize major physical, cognitive, language, emotional, and social attainments of each age period. In addition to offering an overview of change, each entry is page-referenced to provide students with a convenient tool for review.
  • Ask Yourself critical thinking questions prompt students to think about child development in diverse ways, with three question types:
    • Connect questions help students build an image of the whole child by integrating what they have learned across age periods and domains of development.
    • Apply questions encourage application of knowledge to controversial issues and problems faced by children, parents, and professionals who work with them.
    • Reflect questions personalize the study of child development by asking students to reflect on their own development, life experiences, and values.

Four Types of Thematic Boxes

• Biology and Environment boxes highlight our growing awareness of the complex, bidirectional relationship between biology and environment.
• Cultural Influences boxes deepen the attention to culture threaded throughout the text and accentuate both multicultural and cross-cultural variations in development.
• Social Issues boxes discuss the impact of social conditions on children and emphasize the need for sensitive social and public policies to ensure their well-being. They are divided into two types:
  • Social Issues: Health boxes address values and practices relevant to children’s physical and mental health.
  • Social Issues: Education boxes focus on home, school, and community influences on children’s learning.