Sociology Paper

Phillip Beniga

2/5/16

Sociology 15

Final Research Project

          For my final research project, I will be observing my nephew, Aaron Leonardo Beniga.  He is currently 5 years old and is the only child in the family. The institution that I will be focusing on today is his afterschool day care in Monterey Highlands Elementary School. I am really happy that I get to observe my little nephew because I get to see him almost every day after school and I wanted to learn what goes on inside of daycare. I was gladly accepted by all of the teachers and gave them my introduction on why I want to experiment, not only my nephew but everyone surrounding him. The four educational topics that I will be focusing on during my observation and research analysis are his behavior among his peers, media, gender role, and mannerism.

          During the past couple weeks of brief observation, I had kept an eye on my little nephew at the daycare center and seen many major changes of him. Throughout my time inside the daycare, I had spoken to one of the teachers and every year they would examine every child on an assessment. The assessment was based on collecting information about the children’s development, learning, health, behavior, and academic progress. However this past few weeks, my nephew has been doing really well according to the teachers and me. For example, putting things away, every activity ends with the kids putting things back where they belong. While they were putting things away, I was examining every single one of the including my nephew, there for them was a chocolate chip cookie. This is a perfect example of positive reinforcement, the offering consequences for a behavior with the intention of increasing the chance of that behavior being repeated in the future. We watched them clearly to spot the kids who are only pretending to pick up and the kids who disappear into the bathroom for a period of time. For the kids who disappear, they would always come ask later “Where is my cookie!!” and it would always end up someone crying on the floor begging for one. While my nephew ate his cookie, I wanted to see if he can say thank you by giving him a look, teaching him mannerism which will help him to completely develop the behavior when she or he grows up and becomes adult. He did exactly what was expected and later that day, I had told his parents about the good news and they became really understanding to the growth of their child helping him learn the basic inside daycare.

          During my third day in the afterschool program, I had told the teachers if I can conduct an experiment that can explain gender role and the effects of the media. I offered for the last day of school if they can watch the movie “Tarzan”. In the end of the movie, my mission was to ask my nephew a series of simple question that defines gender role in the Disney film. Disney movies are adore and admire by kids worldwide. Throughout close examination, my nephew was very intrigued of the movie because it had a strong sense of gender role. The main male hero, Tarzan, is portrayed as independent, assertive, intelligent, athletic, competent and stronger than everybody else. On the other hand, Jane, the main female idol, is emotional, tentative, romantic, affectionate, sensitive, frail, passive, and weaker than Tarzan. This movie focuses generally effects how the media can affect a child perspective in gender role. After the movie was over I asked my nephew how are boys different than boys? He answered “Boys are better than girls” I asked why and he replied “Boys are stronger than the girls sometimes”. This indicates how my nephew already understand his gender that men are seen as masculine. After hours of watching the movie, I noticed that he was acting strange. He was mimicking Tarzan by bending his legs and walking with his hands like he was a monkey. This explains the Preparatory Stage, it consist of children imitating people around them.

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