Actually my wife is a teacher of young kids here in Australia and they do quite a lot of developmental psych, even more in the special needs graduate stuff she did. For the higher grades there seems to be very little, which goes some way to explain a lot about the crap high school teachers out there.
Most people seem to feel you need a good high school, but for my kids I really want to concentrate on the early years of learning. Home schooling in high school would probably be a massive improvement, but kids seem pretty happy to be with their friends then.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what you find out. I'm about 6 weeks away from being a father for the first time, so I'm very interested in the topic.
As I said I haven't taken the class yet, but if you haven't already, check out Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence. It's really scary to realize not only does EI play a much greater role in future success than IQ, but that the brain is 85% percent formed by age five, after which EI is basically fixed. The good news though is that maximizing this is mostly a function of doing easy things like holding your child for the requisite amount of time each day and such. I guess my point is that it seems important focus first on the stuff you can't fix later if you mess up.
Most people seem to feel you need a good high school, but for my kids I really want to concentrate on the early years of learning. Home schooling in high school would probably be a massive improvement, but kids seem pretty happy to be with their friends then.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what you find out. I'm about 6 weeks away from being a father for the first time, so I'm very interested in the topic.