CHD3243 Developmental Theory Application Essay #3
“The Ideal Middle or High School for Adolescents”
Overview of Assignment: The goal of this assignment will be to demonstrate your understanding and ability to apply developmental theories to various domains of adolescent development, and to summarize current research findings about adolescent development as presented in course content. Students will write a 3-4 page essay applying developmental theories, course content, and scholarly resources to the prompt described below. Students will need to answer the prompts using appropriate developmental theories, course content, and outside scholarly resources. Students will follow APA formatting guidelines for their essay.
Essay Prompt:
In Chapter 10, we examined the way the school context impacts adolescent development. Yet we also discussed how there may be mismatch between the needs of developing adolescents and the instructional design and school climate of many typical middle and high schools. For this essay, you will need to describe how you would design the “ideal middle or high school” that would best meet the developmental needs of adolescents. You can decide if you want to design a middle or high school. For your design, consider how you would structure the physical building, school calendar, daily schedule, course offerings, instructional methods, and classroom management that would best meet the needs of adolescents. You do NOT need to draw a physical design, but instead just describe the design with words.
While you will need to incorporate content from Chapter 10, you will also need to go back and apply content from other chapters throughout the semester that would describe the developmental needs of adolescents, including cognitive, social- emotional, and physical development. Throughout your essay, you will need to incorporate at least two developmental theories from anywhere in the textbook to describe the developmental needs of adolescents, as well as apply at least one other scholarly resource from a peer-reviewed journal article.
Instructions: Read the essay prompt above. Use content from Chapter 10 as a starting point, but draw from other content and theories from throughout the course as well as research from at least one outside scholarly resource to guide your essay. Individually write a 3-4 page essay following the prompt as well as the following guidelines:
1. Use at least two developmental theories outlined in the textbook to guide your essay (5 points per theory X 2 theories, for total of 10 points)
As you are writing your essay, pick at least two theories that would explain the physical, cognitive, and/or social-emotional needs of adolescents and how your design would best meet these needs.
2. Apply course content from Chapter 10 plus other relevant chapters to this prompt (2 points per main concept X 5 concepts, for a total of 10 points). Focus on the following main design concepts:
a. Physical building
b. School calendar/daily schedule
c. Course offerings
d. Instructional methods
e. Classroom management methods
As you are writing about your design for an ideal middle or high school, you will need to justify your design with relevant course content, including information related to the school context from Chapter 10, as well as content related to developmental needs of adolescents from throughout the rest of the textbook.
3. Use FSU library resources to find at least one outside scholarly resource (peer-reviewed research journal article from the last 10 years) related to this prompt and integrate it into your article where appropriate. (worth 5 points)
4. Use APA formatting guidelines to write a 3-4 page paper describing your analysis. (5 points)
This essay should follow APA formatting guidelines, including cover page, running head, in-text citations and reference page (you should cite the textbook and other outside resources). Note that your page count does NOT include the cover page or reference page. An abstract is NOT needed. This essay should NOT be written in first-person (avoid using the words “I” or “my”).
See the complete grading rubric in Canvas for a full description of how you will be graded on this assignment.
Note: This paper will be submitted through Turnitin, which checks for plagiarism. If your Turnitin similarity score is >20%, there will be deductions in points, as that is an indication of simply cutting and pasting content and not summarizing or using critical thinking. If your Turnitin report indicates blatant plagiarism (using someone else’s work or your previous work), you will receive a 0 and will be reported for academic dishonesty.
