Childhood Studies Minor

Program Overview

Childhood Studies is a rising academic field that considers critical questions regarding difference, power, privilege and subjectivity while appreciating children as agents of culture and worthy of rights.

Open to All UVM Undergraduate Students

The Childhood Studies (CHS) Minor offers a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to understanding and appreciating children and the social and cultural constructions of childhood. Individualize your academic experience through core courses and elective courses while drawing on the expertise of faculty from across the university.

Note: The CHS Minor is not available for Early Childhood Education majors.

Activate Your Learning

• Explore current challenges facing children locally, nationally, and globally.
• Recognize your role as social justice advocate in promoting thriving children, families and communities.
• Apply knowledge and theory in the real world through civic learning and service learning.
• Engage with current research.
• Function as an agent of positive social change and justice.

Curriculum

The 18-credit minor includes 9 credits at the 2000-level and higher. Coursework includes child development, early childhood education, interdisciplinary electives to explore various social science and interdisciplinary perspectives, and a capstone experience.

You can double dip one interdisciplinary elective with major requirements (if allowed by your major).

Begin the curated sequence of coursework with EDEC 1010: Movie Night: Critical Childhood Studies introducing themes and approaches to social science inquiry.

Next, choose a developmental course with scientific grounding in how children grow and change, develop brain architecture, construct knowledge about the world, and create relationships as the foundation for future learning, behavior, and health.

Select from a variety of interdisciplinary electives with a civic learning experience and opportunities to explore how children learn and construct knowledge about the world. Electives include courses from fields such as ANTH, CSD, ECSP, ECLD, EDHE, EDSP, GEOG, GSWS, HDFS, PSYS, SOC, and STAT.

Apply learning in advocacy of children’s rights, education, or welfare through a variable-credit capstone experience (EDEC 3070: Advocacy in Action). Conduct inquiry and action research in partnership with schools, childcare programs or community organizations providing service or advocacy to improve public policies.

Course Sequence:

Introductory Course (required):

• EDEC 1070 D2/S1: Movie Night-Critical Childhood Studies (3 credits)

Developmental Knowledge (choose one):

• EDEC 1630: Child Development (3 credits)
• HDF 1050: Human Development (3 credits)
• PSYS 2400: Developmental Psych: Childhood (3 credits)

Early Childhood Electives (choose one or two)

• EDEC 1010 D2/GC2: Intro to Early Care and Education (with Civic Learning 4 credits)
• EDEC 2130 AH1: Creative Arts and Movement
• EDEC 2510 SU: Science of Everyday Life
• EDEC 3810: Inquiry-Based Pedagogy

Capstone (required):

• EDEC 3070: SL/GC2/WIL2: Advocacy in Action (variable 3-6 credits)

Admissions

Contact the Childhood Studies Minor Program Coordinator at Lauren.MacKillop@uvm.edu if you are interested or have questions. 

Declare the minor through the Registrar's Office, or simply email registrar@uvm.edu to have the minor added to your degree audit.

Feel free to reach out to the CESS Student Services Office for help!

• Email: cessstsv@uvm.edu
• Phone: 802-656-3468

Outcomes

• Students will demonstrate a complex and competency-based view of childhood, including how children are influenced by culture and also function as social agents in their own right.        
• Through readings, activities, assignments and field work, students will evidence increased awareness of and appreciation for how socially, culturally and physically diverse backgrounds and experiences shape children’s lives.
• Students will develop knowledge and actionable skills in the areas of child development, social science, care and education that is relational, inclusive, multidisciplinary, pluralistic, anti-bias, and anti-racist.
• Students will interrogate and advocate for children’s needs and rights in a final capstone experience, by pursuing a community-engaged action research project designed to benefit children.