HDFS 101 Lifespan Development

Overview of Course

You are aboard the most extraordinary classroom on earth – and this course is built for exactly this moment.

Most of us do not fully comprehend the vast diversity of how humans develop from birth until death. We are about to change that. Together, we will explore the physical, cognitive, sexual, and socio-emotional aspects of development across the lifespan – and we will do it with the whole world as our laboratory.

You will expand your thinking about how relationships, family, culture, history, biology, and environment shape who we become. We will examine infancy, childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, and later life – and we will ask what those experiences look like across the ports we visit and in comparison with what you have known.

This course will help you think and engage as a developmentalist – equipped to understand the developing person from infancy to later adulthood and everything in between. That understanding will serve you in relationships, careers, and in every human encounter ahead.

Most exciting of all: you will have direct opportunities to observe and interact with children and youth from diverse cultures during our time in port. Every port is a new data point. Every conversation is a lesson.

The ocean is deep and wide. Let’s jump in.