A dynamic bio-psychosocial developmental approach guides the curriculum.  It includes knowledge from all the disciplines that contribute to understanding early human development and its disorders including; emotional and social development, cognitive and language functioning, perceptual motor and sensory functioning, neurobiology, caregiver/child interaction patterns, family patterns, psychopathology, and the larger community and cultural contexts.  In this sense, the program is interdisciplinary, bringing together knowledge from all the disciplines that contribute to our understanding of infancy and early childhood mental health, developmental disorders, and parental and family socio-emotional functioning.  An overriding theme in the curriculum is the way in which the different facets of development, including normative and disordered patterns, relate to one another and can be understood as part of an integrated, dynamic developmental framework.  New findings from various sources such as direct observations and clinical work are focal points of investigation. Furthermore, research on infants, young children and their families with various types of challenges and disorders, including; work on individual processing differences, early interactive relationships, and cultural differences and shared traits, are also be emphasized.

The curriculum includes state of the art online courses in two academic areas:

• Infant Mental Health & Developmental Disorders
• Infant Mental Health Research & Statistics

These courses are integrated with supervised incremental practicum opportunities embedded within the curriculum. The clinical and research experience involves 960 hours of clinical practicum, 240 hours of applied research practicum, 240 hours of applied assessment of children and families, and 80 hours of mentoring. The clinical and research experience is obtained through student participation at appropriate training sites, where regularly scheduled individual and group supervision given by ICDL Faculty are conducted.  The supervised practicum is coordinated with the academic curriculum, allowing students to apply concepts acquired through distance courses and receive feedback from ICDL Faculty with clinical and research expertise in each of the academic courses. 

This doctoral level program also requires the completion of a dissertation on an innovative research topic, involving infancy and early childhood mental health and/or developmental disabilities. The combination of online courses, supervised practicum and the dissertation prepares students to become sensitive, ethical, and culturally competent professional leaders.  Our goal is to assist students in embracing a psychosocial developmental model, an interdisciplinary approach to integrate theory, practice and research, and improve the lives of infants, young children and their families.

The ICDL Graduate School fosters key values throughout the curriculum that are critical to training sensitive, ethical, and culturally competent professionals:

• Respect for all individual and cultural differences of children, families, and professionals;
• Belief in the strengths of all children, families and professionals to emotionally, socially and cognitively engage in learning and contributing to society;
• Commitment to promote Infant Mental Health with professional excellence.