The assignment that was most engaging was concerning chapter eight on ‘social and behavioral outcomes: school-aged children’. Particularly the section titled ‘gender role development in middle childhood’ was so occupying. The section was engaging than others because it involved evaluating what goes in the minds of school going children. School going children are able to identify and practice behaviors they observe in the society. Therefore, it is not easy to understand their acquired behaviors as compared to younger children. According to this section, school going children develop gender stereotypes depending on several factors.
There are many new things that I learnt from this section. This section taught me how children acquire gender stereotypes. Before reading the section, I used to think that some of the gender stereotypes we attach to masculine and feminine were natural, but this has been proved wrong. There are several gender stereotypes that we attach to masculine and feminine. Children at an early age are able to identify and relate with them depending on many factors. For instance, children describe girls using appearance-related terms such as long hair, jewelry, dresses, and makeup. Contrary, children describe boys generally in behavior or activity-related terms such as action fantasy play, rough and tumble play, and wrestling.
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Another new thing that I have learned concerns the systems of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Three systems in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model play a role in gender stereotyping in the socialization process. The three systems include microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Microsystem includes family attitudes or values, exosystem refers to mass media, and macrosystem is the child’s cultural setting. Microsystem of parents tends to influence child’s gender stereotyping than any other microsystem. Society and the mass media are parts of the exosystem that can influence a child’s knowledge of and use of gender stereotypes. Child’s perceptions of gender status as influenced by cultural values are one of the macrosystem that influences on gender stereotypes. Cultural values tend to place some groups in high esteem and others in low esteem. Those placed in low esteem groups have a habit of distancing themselves from the group, hence changing their identity by associating themselves with the high-status group.
So far I have performed well in my work; although there are some areas I need some improvement. I have achieved better results in pre-test and post-tests in almost all chapters. I performed better in post-tests than pre-tests except in chapter eight which required much attention than other chapters. All in all, my performance was great and what I would have done to improve my performance was to revise the chapters that I performed poorly. Revising your notes well improves performance because it helps students understand what they may have not understood during the lecture.
In conclusion, the most engaging assignment was about chapter eight and in particular the section titled ‘gender role development in middle childhood.’ There are many new things that I learnt from this section. This section taught me how children acquire gender stereotypes. There are several gender stereotypes that we attach to masculine and feminine. Children at an early age are able to identify and relate with them depending on many factors. Three systems in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model play a role in gender stereotyping in the socialization process. The three systems include microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Microsystem includes family attitudes or values, exosystem refers to mass media, and macrosystem is the child’s cultural setting. So far I have performed well in my work; although there are some areas I need some improvement. I performed better in post-tests than pre-tests except in chapter eight which required much attention than other chapters.