Research Guide to Child Development

This research guide provides information relevant to the Child Development Associate program (CDA), although many of the materials will also be useful to students of early childhood education.

• Introduction/How to Search
• Reference Resources (Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, eBooks, Etc.)
• Online Databases
• Web Sites

 Indicates title is an ebook

Introduction/How to Search

Librarians do not simply buy materials and randomly put them onto the shelves. Each new item is classified-meaning it is examined carefully and assigned a number to make sure that materials on the same subject are shelved together. Pima College's Library uses the Library of Congress classification system, as does the University of Arizona. This system assigns each subject a combination of letters and numbers, then uses these letters and numbers to arrange materials on the shelves. (For more information see How to Read a Call Number.)

The following table shows how some basic subject headings in child development are classified. Clicking on any of these subject headings will start a search for the subject in the Library catalog.

Reference Resources

This section lists a few child development reference tools. Not all the print resources listed are available at all campus libraries. Check the Library catalog to verify the availability of titles.

• Arkin, Elaine Bratic, and United States. Bureau of Maternal and Child Health and Resources Development. Infant Care. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Public Health Service Health Resources and Services Administration Bureau of Maternal and Child Health and Resources Development ; Supt. of Docs. U.S. G.P.O. distributor, 1989. Call no.: RJ61 .A663 1989. This U.S. government publication provides information on preparing for a newborn, infant care, infant growth and development, infant health and safety, and emergencies and first aid.
  
• Bergen, Doris. Assessment Methods for Infants and Toddlers: Transdisciplinary Team Approaches. New York: Teachers College Press, 1994. Call no.:  RJ51.D48 B47 1994eb. This title deals with the assessment of young children (from birth to age 3) at developmental risk. "It is particularly focused on identifying ways team assessments can be effectively used to gather the information needed for design of intervention activities and delivery of appropriate services."
  
• Buckler, J. M. H. A Reference Manual of Growth and Development. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1997. Call no.: RJ131 .B8 1997. This reference presents "normal data" on children: everything from length, height and weight to head circumference, dental development, and other measures.
  
• Buros, Oscar Krisen, and Buros Institute of Mental Measurements. The ... Mental Measurements Yearbook. Highland Park, N.J.: The Mental Measurements Yearbook etc., 1941. Call no.: ZBF 431 M549. Published since 1941, this is the standard reference source for information on tests and measurements of all sorts, including tests for children (e.g., the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory, the Early Childhood Attention Deficit Disorders Evaluation Scale, etc.)
  
• Child Growth and Development. Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin Pub. Group, 1994-. Call no.: HQ767.8 .C45. This annually published anthology contains articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers on a variety of topics related to child growth and development.
  
• Current Pediatric Diagnosis & Treatment. Los Altos, Calif.: Lange Medical Publications, 1970- . Call no.: RJ1 .K45 2003. This guide contains 44 chapters that address the questions which arise in the day-to-day practice of pediatrics.
  
• Fass, Paula S. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society. 3 vols. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Call no.:  HQ767.87 .E722 2004. This 3-volume set presents the social and cultural history of childhood from antiquity to the present, including articles on education, parenting, child labor, economics, play, law, social welfare, and several other topics. Comparative articles include information about childhood in cultures around the world.
  
• Feldhausen, Jil. Pediatric Nutrition Handbook. New York: Chapman & Hall, 1996. Call no.: RM217.2 .C44 1996. This small handbook provides information on general nutrition, food sources of selected nutrients, determination of nutrient requirements, assessment of nutritional status factors associated with nutritional risk in children, age-specific nutrition recommendations, and disease-specific feeding issues.
  
• Franck, Irene M., and David M. Brownstone. The Parent's Desk Reference. 1st pbk. ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 1992. Call no.: HQ769 .F717 1992. Aimed at parents, this title provides guidance on parenting, children's health, and child development.
  
• Gestwicki, Carol. Developmentally Appropriate Practice : Curriculum and Development in Early Education. Albany, N.Y.: Delmar Publishers, 1995. Call no.: LB1139.25 .G47 1995. This handbook provides useful overviews of developmentally appropriate physical environments, social-emotional environments, and cognitive-language environments.
  
• Gillis, Jack, and Mary Ellen R. Fise. The Childwise Catalog : A Consumer Guide to Buying the Safest and Best Products for Your Children : Newborns through Age 5. 1st Perennial Library ed, rev. and updat ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Call no.: RJ61.G418 1990. Aimed at consumers, this book serves as a product-specific guide to products for children, by age group.
  
  
• Horn Book Inc., and Association for Library Service to Children. The Newbery & Caldecott Medal Books, 1986-2000 : A Comprehensive Guide to the Winners. Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association, 2001. Call no.: Z1037.A2 N492 2001. This handbook provides information on the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott medals for children's literature.
  
• Human Development. Guilford, Ct.: Dushkin Pub. Group Inc., 1980-. Call no.: HQ768 .A55. This annually published title serves as an anthology, providing a compilation of articles from journals, magazines and newspapers.
  
• Jefferson, Thomas C., and Tracy Irons-Georges. Children's Health. 2 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 1999. Call no.: RJ101 .C5276 1999. This encyclopedia offers 352 articles that survey "the broad range of diseases, disorders, and defects that can affect infants, young children, or teenagers and charts the emotional, cognitive, physical, and social stages of development that most children follow."
  
• Larrick, Nancy. A Parent's Guide to Children's Reading. 5th ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982. Call no.: LB1140.5.R4 L37 1982b. Aimed at the needs of parents and educators, this book provides guidance and suggestions on how to encourage reading beginning in pre-school.
  
• Lerner, Richard M., Anne C. Petersen, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. Encyclopedia of Adolescence. 2 vols. New York: Garland Pub., 1991. Call no.: HQ796 .E58 1990. This encyclopedia offers over 200 multidisciplinary articles on topics relating to adolescence. the intended audience is researchers, teachers, and practitioners.
  
• Lovejoy, Frederick H., David Estridge, and Children's Hospital (Boston Mass.). The New Child Health Encyclopedia. New York: Delacorte Press, 1987. Call no.: RJ61 .N389 1987. Aimed at parents, this reference tool has sections on keeping children healthy, finding health care for children, emergencies, and diseases and symptoms.
  
• Merrell, Kenneth W. Behavioral, Social, and Emotional Assessment of Children and Adolescents. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1999. Call no.:  BF722 .M45 1999eb. This title explores the foundations and methods of assessment and the assessment of specific problems, competencies and populations.
  
• Noshpitz, Joseph D. Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 4 vols. New York: Wiley, 1997. Call no.: RJ499.3 .H356 1997. This multi-volume set provides information on development and syndromes of Infants and preschoolers,grade school children, adolescence, and the varieties of development.
  
• Osofsky, Joy D., Hiram E. Fitzgerald, and World Association for Infant Mental Health. Handbook of Infant Mental Health. 4 vols. New York: Wiley, 2000. Call no.: RJ502.5 .H362 2000. This multi-volume set from the WAIMH provides in-depth essays in four major areas: perspectives of infant mental health; early intervention, evaluation, and assessment; parenting and child care; infant mental health groups at high risk.
  
• Salkind, Neil J. Child Development. New York: Macmillan Reference, 2002. Call no.:  HQ767.9 C5122 2002.  This 487 page book is written for the general reader, and covers issues related to human development from conception through adolescence.: This 487 page book is written for the general reader, and covers issues related to human development from conception through adolescence.
  
• Schiller, Pamela Byrne, and Pat Phipps. The Complete Daily Curriculum for Early Childhood : Over 1,200 Easy Activities to Support Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon House, 2002. Call no.: LB1139.35.A37 S35 2002. Aimed at teachers of three- to six-year old children, this title provides over 1,200 activities, arranged by themes (e.g., "the shape of things," "celebrations").
  
• Silver, Henry K., et al. Silver, Kempe, Bruyn & Fulginiti's Handbook of Pediatrics. Norwalk, Conn.: Appleton & Lange, 1991. Call no.: RJ48 .S64. This handbook provides information on the care of children, from infancy through adolescence. Among the topics covered are growth and development of the healthy child, ambulatory care, preventive medicine, and diagnosis and management of common pediatric disorders.
  
• Wallander, Jan Lance, and Lawrence J. Siegel. Adolescent Health Problems : Behavioral Perspectives. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Call no.: RJ47.53 .A36 1995. This is a collection of essays on a variety of issues, research, and clinical perspectives on adolescent health-risk and prevention behaviors and chronic physical conditions.
  
• Wien, Carol Anne. Developmentally Appropriate Practice in "Real Life": Stories of Teacher Practical Knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995. Call no.:  LB1775.2 .W44 1995eb. This very practical title looks at the "real world of teaching" as experienced by five child-care teachers, and examines a variety of issues relating to the difficulties of establishing a developmentally appropriate teaching practice.

Online Databases

Unless otherwise indicated, the databases below are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a student ID or a faculty/staff Library card.

• A good source for access to articles in child development and early childhood education, as well as a small number of titles in the field of child psychology, is  ProQuest Education Journals, which provides the full text of articles in over 20 periodicals.
  
• Another database specific to education is EBSCO’s Education Research Complete. This bibliographic and full text database covers scholarly research and information relating to all areas of education. Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing. Education Research Complete also covers areas of curriculum instruction as well as administration, policy, funding, and related social issues. Searches in this database also query another EBSCO database, Professional Development Collection.
• Established in 1966, ERIC (the Educational Resource Information Center) is supported by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement and is administered by the U.S. National Library of Education (NLE). ERIC is the largest education database in the world—containing over one million records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books. The PCC Library subscribes to two different “flavors” of ERIC: one from EBSCO, the other from ProQuest. The difference between the two (beyond the search interface, of course) is that each offers access to different sets of full text journals. Thus, if you don’t find an educational journal article in full-text in one version of ERIC, make sure you try the other…just in case!
• Primary Search, designed specifically for elementary school libraries, contains full text for nearly 70 popular, elementary school magazines. All full text articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Additionally, Primary Search includes the Encyclopedia of Animals™, and features Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, providing students with easy-to-read encyclopedic entries written specifically for kids. The database also provides the American Heritage® Children's Dictionary, 3rd Edition from Houghton Mifflin, and an Image Collection. This database can be useful to teachers who need materials for lesson plans.
• Providing articles from a variety of sources (mostly magazines and newspapers), SIRS Knowledge Source comprises several databases, including one entitled "SIRS Researcher." This database provides information on topics related to the family, including youth.

Web Sites

There are many web sites devoted to child development and early childhood education. We've listed a small number of high-quality sites that contain links to additional sites.

• Child Trends Databank. 2002. Web site. Available at: http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/. Accessed on: Aug. 30, 2007. This web site is sponsored by Child Trends, a non-profit children's research association. It provides access to "the latest national trends and research on over 80 key indicators of child and youth well-being."
  
• Earlychildhood.com. 2002. Web site. Available at: http://www.earlychildhood.com/. Accessed on: Aug. 30, 2007. This site is designed to provide articles and links to activities and curriculum for early childhood educators. It also features articles from Earlychildhood NEWS.
  
• National Center for Early Development & Learning. NCEDL. 2004. Web site. Available at: http://www.fpg.unc.edu/%7Encedl/. Accessed on: Aug. 30, 2007. This web site is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and provides access to research that "focuses on enhancing thecognitive, social and emotional development of children from birth through age eight." NCEDL also lists related web sites for further research.
  
• Parenthood.Com. 2004. Web site. Available at: http://parenthood.com/links.html. Accessed on: Aug. 30, 2007. This consumer-oriented web directory lists web sites in topics such as caring for children, pregnancy, parenting, family, education, and parenting.
  
• United States. Administration for Children and Families. Head Start Bureau. 2004. Web site. Available at: http://www2.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/hsb/. Accessed on: Aug. 30, 2007. The Head Start program "serves the child development needs of preschool children (birth through age five) and their low-income families." Of particular note at this site are links to government sponsored research and statistics, as well as publications and information resources.