The course consists of lectures, readings, discussions, panels of guest speakers, group and individual projects. The purpose of the lectures, readings, discussion and panels of guest speakers is to explore a variety of aspects of adolescence and adolescent health. The group and individual projects are meant to help students develop skills to work in multi-disciplinary teams and analyze adolescent health concerns through conceptual frameworks and recommend effective solutions through interventions.

How has the end of apartheid affected the experiences of South African children and adolescents This pioneering study provides a compelling account of the realities of everyday life for the first generation of children and adolescents growing up in a democratic South Africa. The authors examine the lives of young people across historically divided communities at home in the neighbourhoods where they live and at school. The picture that emerges is one of both diversity and similarity as young people navigate their way through a complex landscape that is unevenly post-apartheid. Historically and culturally rooted, their identities are forged in response to their perceptions of social redress and to anxieties about others living on the margins of their daily lives. Although society has changed in profound ways, many features of the Apartheid Era persist, material inequalities and poverty continue to shape everyday life, race and class continue to define neighbourhoods, and integration is a sought after, but limited, experience for the young. Growing up in the new South Africa is based on rich ethnographic research in one area of Cape Town, together with an analysis of quantitative data for the city as a whole. The authors, all based at the time in the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town, draw on varied disciplinary backgrounds to reveal a world in which young people's lives are shaped by both an often adverse environment and the agency that they themselves exercise.

This course is an introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology. It begins with a short overview of the discipline's development and principal methodologies. The subsequent units are arranged around broad areas of research, including emotion, development, memory, and psychopathology. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Identify the steps of the scientific method and explain how this method applies to psychological research methodology and statistical analyses; Demonstrate an understanding of the general history of the field; Explain the nature versus nurture argument and the current status of thinking regarding gene-environment interaction; Identify the basic components and mechanisms of the major biological systems often studied in psychology; Demonstrate an understanding of the basic findings within a variety of areas of psychology, including sensation and perception, memory and learning, development, social psychology, and psychopathology. (Psychology 101)

Developmental psychology concerns itself with the changes (psychological and otherwise) that occur as a result of our physical and mental maturation. This course proceeds from prenatal development through adolescent and adult development. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: Discuss the interaction between and the roles of nature and nurture in lifespan development.; Describe the basic development of the human nervous system; Explain the developmental processes associated with the five senses; Describe the important developmental milestones and age expectations associated with motor skills, social skills, cognitive ability, sensory awareness, and the use of language; Discuss the important theories of cognitive development, including those of Piaget, Vygotsky, the information-processing approach, and the intelligence perspective; Discuss and contrast the nativist, behavioral-cognitive, functionalist, and learning stage theories of language development; Describe the developmental process of language, from cooing and babbling to mature language; Explain the important theoretical issues in the study of the development of personality; Discuss the most influential theories of personality development, including those of Freud, Erikson, Klein and Mahler, Bowlby, and Ainsworth; Explain Kohlberg's theory of moral development, including the perspectives of its critics; Describe the physical and cognitive changes associated with adolescent development; Explain the significance of the differences in maturation rates between individuals; Discuss the major issues of development in adulthood, including marriage and divorce, parenting, and mid-/later-life physical and cognitive changes. (Psychology 302a)