The Subject Learning Outcomes demonstrated by successful completion of the task below include:
Task Summary
To consolidate your knowledge of the impact of childhood experience and to evaluate the impact of
lifelong experience on personality and human development, you are required to reflect on your own
childhood experience.
You will be required to identify and reflect upon two (2) of your own developmental milestones (one
from childhood and one from adulthood), and provide a critical reflection that describes your
experiences, then write about them in light of developmental theories studied.
Please see the Task Instructions for more details.
Context
This assessment will facilitate your application of lifespan theories to the practical situations you may
encounter in your role as a counsellor. It will assist you in developing the capacity to be self-reflexive
around your childhood experiences and to appreciate your own lifespan development.
Task Instructions
For this assessment, you are required to write a reflective essay about the way your own childhood
experiences have affected your personal development.
1. First, you must identify and describe two (1) significant personal developmental milestones.
One from your early childhood and another from adulthood.
2. Next, consider an important event from your adult life for which you have an adequate explicit
memory: finding and holding a long-term job, having children, raising children through a key
developmental period (such as adolescence), developing a committed relationship, embracing
a mid-life change, coming out as a sexual minority, and so forth. Equally, overcoming some
trauma or adversity (including significant loss) with the outcome of greater selfempowerment would be relevant.
3. Then, using evidence, critically analyse how the milestones you experienced in your early
years affected your development in later stages of life, with relation to the event you
considered in step 2. Each milestone is to be analysed with reference to bio‐psycho-social,
political and cultural influences, how they impacted your life-course and how you have learnt
from them. This should include the decisions faced, changes that occurred, chances you did
or did not have and choices you made. Please make reference of the developmental theories
discussed during the subject as part of your reflection.
Developmental Milestone Considerations
Here are a few comments relating to what counts as a milestone. Most approaches to the study of
human development identify major periods. This course has been partially divided along such lines.
Periods themselves are not milestones, but the successful conclusion and transition from one
period to the next might count as a milestone. Within each of the developmental periods, there will
be a host of varying tasks, many of which will have been discussed in class or readings.
For example, in infancy the commencement of an initial attachment in the first two years of life is
a developmental milestone. So also is the development of language in early childhood or even
learning to walk for that matter. A first romantic relationship, in adolescence or adulthood would
be another example of a milestone. The loss of a close loved one might also be a consideration.
Demonstrate a self-reflexive understanding of childhood experience
Critically analyse and evaluate the impact of lifelong experience on personality and human development