Summary

Review

I have to admit that I was somewhat intimidated by this book when it arrived on my desk for review - it's a real 'doorstop' of a tome! However, before very long I was totally immersed in the innovative and highly accessible learning style that it offered. It is, of course, a textbook for students studying child development. Like any textbook it identifies key learning points and exemplifies them for students to encourage a good understanding of the topic under discussion. What this book does differently, (and even a wizened old early years specialist like me got involved in these), is link to an online site where you can find video clips to support the exemplifications, quizzes to measure students' understanding and even revision tools such as flashcards to help students preparing for exams. I'd not come across such an interactive way of learning and I know that the trainees at my nursery would find this method extremely helpful. Apart from individual students benefiting from the book I can see what a useful whole-staff resource it would be. There are plenty of discussion points and questions to provide challenge and generate discussions - which makes me think how useful it would be at staff meetings or CPD events. It is an expensive book - but if set against a staff training budget would provide training across a whole year supplemented by notes and videos to enrich staff learning. It seems that the book is written for the American market and sometimes the spelling and sentence structures are noticeably different - however, children are children and the links to International research and the historical references to the theories of child development are as relevant to the the US students as they are to ours. If you have a training budget for child development CPD then this should be something you look at and consider purchasing, there are extensive preview pages available on Amazon which will help you get a sense of how this new style of textbook works.