This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the major theories, the strengths and shortcomings of each, the sequence of child development and the processes that underlie it, an appreciation of the impact of context and culture in child development, the joint contribution of biology and environment in development, a sense of the interdependence of all aspects of development physical, cognitive, emotional, and social and an appreciation of the interrelatedness of theory, research and applications.

This course revolves around the deep exploration of several key questions, such as, what is the relationship among play, creativity, and artistic expression? What are the developmental purposes of play and creativity? This course is designed to enable students to develop the understanding of the significance of creative expression and play in early childhood, the major theories of play, the influence of play and creativity on all domains of child development, how differences in gender and culture impact play and creative expression, the developmental nature of play in early childhood and how adults can be responsive, the concept of high-quality play and creativity, culturally contextual play models, particularly in Bangladesh, and the assessment of indoor and outdoor environments, including materials.

The aim is to understand both the developmental continuum of reading and writing as well as the impact of individual differences and social and cultural variations on outcomes; the important role of developmental stages in the early years as well as the social and cultural context in which children live, the basic components of literacy, to assess the quality of literacy environments as well as those to assess children’s progress along the developmental continuum and how instruments can be used to plan experiences and strategies that match children’s age and experience. Environments are explored through an examination of existing program materials and case studies.

This course focuses on ways of working with young children’s primary caregivers, typically in families in support of children’s optimal growth and development. The course begins with a review of a typology of programme strategies for supporting optimal child development, with a view to locating working with families within the mix of strategies used to promote early childhood development (ECD). The potential contributions of family-involving programmes are then considered, looking at the various possible purposes and outcomes of family involving programmes.

The objectives of this course is to provide students with a basic understanding of how to design a program and how to evaluate it, to introduce students with various early childhood programs and different evaluation tools and to support students’ abilities to write clearly and persuasively, defending their ideas about how to move forward in designing a program to improve early childhood development in Bangladesh.

This course provides students with an understanding of the theory of developmental health, brain development and its interconnection with environmental influences, current thinking about genes, experiences, interaction, resilience, self- regulation, coping strategies and social and emotional  competence, children’s communication and learning and current research practices.

Individualized teaching is an educational approach that takes into account what each child brings to the teaching and learning situation. The premise of this approach is that no two children enter into an educational activity in quite the same way. Children bring their own experiences, interests, attitudes, skills, personality, etc. to an activity. This course is organized in a way so that each dimension of individuality is a separate topic area. Strategies for identifying and responding to differences within each dimension are imbedded in the topic area content.

The course enables students to understand the importance of the policies and analyze current policies in place in terms of their impact on young children and their families. The purposes of the course are to gain a better understanding of ECD public policy, the role of policy in the healthy development of young children and the impact of policy on the early childhood field, and current issues emerging around the world. Students will become familiar with the factors which influence policy, international agreements, and public opinion as well as expand their skills in preparing and presenting policy analysis, evaluating policy options and understanding the relationship between research and policy.

This course introduces a wide variety of approaches to research and a range of research studies, equip students in understanding research paradigms and methods and provide knowledge and skills needed for designing and conducting research projects.

Students wishing to pursue a Master’s degree are required to participate in 3 courses consisting of 9 credits. The goal of this seminar is to develop and present a research proposal. Students who successfully complete the Diploma will be able to do Master’s thesis. The courses are ECD530: Research methods and project proposal development, ECD 531: Advanced Seminar and ECD 532: Dissertation.

Each Masters level student is assigned a dissertation supervisor. In the initial phase, under the guidance of the supervisor, students select a dissertation topic; write a proposal, present in the Advance Seminar. Next phase enables students to collect data and writing of a thesis and submit it to the thesis committee.