Human Growth and Development

Chris Beckett studied Psychology at Bristol University and qualified as a social worker at Bangor, North Wales, in 1980, going on to work for eighteen years as a social worker and social work manager, and then for fifteen years as a social work lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of East Anglia. He has had a parallel career for some time as a writer of fiction and is now a full-time writer. His novel, Dark Eden was the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for 2012.Hilary Taylor trained as a social worker after studying English at Oxford University, qualifying in 1973. At the beginning of her career she worked with all service user groups, and later in adult social care, mental health, group therapy and family mediation. She then moved into social work training and education, teaching at Anglia Ruskin University for nine years and also working as an independent practice teacher. She also trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and now has a private counselling and psychotherapy practice.

I have used this text to teach level 4 apprentices who have no prior experience of psychology and how this relates to social work practice. This is a particularly useful text to use for Human Growth and Development, as it links theory to practice and aligns with the teaching on this module. As a lecturer, I would bring this text to lecturers and be able to direct the apprentices to pages within the text which correlated with the learning from that lecture, which the apprentices found to be most useful.

• Chapter 1: The Birth of a Human Being: What makes us who we are?Chapter 2: Below the Surface: Unconscious processes and psychodynamic insightsChapter 3: A Secure Base: The importance of attachmentChapter 4: Learning to think: The developing ability to reasonChapter 5: Learning without Thinking: Ideas from behaviourismChapter 6: Boy or Girl?: The development of sex and genderChapter 7: Who Am I Going to Be? Adolescence, identity and changeChapter 8: Acting like a Grown-up: Challenges of adulthoodChapter 9: Access to Adulthood: Growing up with disabilityChapter 10 No One is an Island: Family systems and their life cycleChapter 11 It Takes a Village: The wider contextChapter 12: Coming to a Conclusion: The experience of growing oldChapter 13: That Good Night: Death, dying and bereavement