Bronfenbrenner's theory 1 Running head: BRONFENBRENNER'S THEORY Uses and misuses of Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory of human development (original) (raw)
The Bronfenbrenner ecological systems theory of human development
2008
This article is focused on Urie Bronfenbrenner ́s ecological theory of human development and socialization. In Finland this theory has been applied in psychology and pedagogy in relation to the phenomena of development and education. In the field of early childhood education the Bronfenbrenner ecological theory has been in recurrent use for well over twenty years. In this article the light is cast specifically on the applicability of the Bronfenbrenner theory to different areas of student research activity, its degree of social orientation, its main features and the ways of its modeling. The article is a theoretical one, based on written works and the author ́s personal experience gained while tutoring student research. Societies and child development Urie Bronfenbrenner was an American psychologist. He was the son of Doctor Alexander Bronfenbrenner and Eugenia Kamenetskaja, born on April 29, 1917 in Moscow, Russia. He was 6 years old, when coming to the United States. He died on Se...
Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory Revision: Moving Culture From the Macro Into the Micro
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2017
Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human development is one of the most widely known theoretical frameworks in human development. In spite of its popularity, the notion of culture within the macrosystem, as a separate entity of everyday practices and therefore microsystems, is problematic. Using the theoretical and empirical work of Rogoff and Weisner, and influenced as they are by Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective, we reconceptualize Bronfenbrenner’s model by placing culture as an intricate part of proximal development processes. In our model, culture has the role of defining and organizing microsystems and therefore becomes part of the central processes of human development. Culture is an ever changing system composed of the daily practices of social communities (families, schools, neighborhoods, etc.) and the interpretation of those practices through language and communication. It also comprises tools and signs that are part of the historical legacy of those communities, and thus diversity is an integral part of the child’s microsystems, leading to culturally defined acceptable developmental processes and outcomes.
Rethinking Developmental Science
Research in Human Development, 2014
The articles in this issue are all based on the invited addresses given by the authors at the 2013 biennial meeting of the Society for the Study of Human Development. All of the authors address the unfolding paradigm shift in developmental sciences, from reductionism to relational developmental system theories. This theoretical stance involves the recognition of Individual ↔ context transactions, with multiple co-acting partners existing in dynamic relationships across the lifespan and life course. The articles address not only theoretical issues, but also methodological advances and their applications. While acknowledging the importance of new data collection and analytical techniques that permit the testing of more complex theoretical models, the articles demonstrate that well-designed questions from this theoretical perspective can also yield novel findings which are highly relevant to current real-world problems and social policy issues. This issue of Research in Human Development (RHD) is special for two reasons. First, it is composed of invited addresses from the 2013 biannual meeting of the Society for the Study of Human Development (SSHD), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As such, I cannot really take credit for the compilation of this issue-that honor rightfully belongs to Willis (Bill) Overton, who organized the conference as President-Elect of the SSHD and invited this group of luminaries in the field of developmental science, and who is providing the commentary to this issue. Nonetheless, it has been a privilege to work with these authors, who have been highly instrumental in spearheading cutting edge issues in developmental science and who have contributed really terrific articles. Second, this is my last issue as Editor of RHD. I started in the summer of 2009, taking over from Erin Phelps, who ably shepherded this journal for several years. It has really been a tremendous amount of fun (and work). RHD is an unusual journal in several ways. It is one of the few journals which is lifespan, multidisciplinary, and embraces multi-method approaches. Further, we publish only special issues. Thus, we welcome proposals which have articles representing all stages of life, and from several disciplines, including psychological, sociology, philosophy, and biology. The topics of our issues in the past five years have ranged from epigenetics and evolutionary biology (Greenberg, 2014; Wanke & Spittle, 2011) and systems science (Urban, Osgood, & Mabry, 2011) to the life course effects of military service (Spiro & Settersten, 2012
Duration and experience: The temporality of development
Temporality: Culture in the Flow of Human Experience
It seems evident that development takes place over time. Yet, most theories and empirical research on development does not take the time dimension into account. This paper tries to analyze what temporality assumptions a developmental theory should make. This is done through studying a number of philosophers for whom temporality was important and who present different ideas on what time is and how it may be analyzed. Some of these ideas are then associated with modern scientific thinking, notably Gibsonian Ecological psychology and Dynamic Systems Approaches, which provide basic concepts for the temporality assumptions of a developmental theory for the life sciences. A particular tribute is paid to Kierkegaard, who — with his conceptions of Repetition, Augenblick (moment) and Exception — more than any other offers a key to the understanding of stability and change in the life course of an individual organism. The paper concludes with an extended and generalized understanding of Dynamic Systems Approaches, proposed as a theoretical basis for conceptualizing the temporality of development, akin to the scope outlined by Ken Richardson (2008).
Childhood and the evolution of the human life course
Human Nature, 2002
Childhood has been the focus of research and debate among anthropologists, developmental psychologists, demographers, economists, and other social scientists for fifty years (Konner 1991; Panter-Brick 1998). As a result, there are diverse research traditions and trajectories that have arisen with varying levels of intercommunication. Recent theoretical developments in human evolutionary ecology have shifted away from description of the normative characteristics of childhood across societies towards exploration of the evolutionary history of primate ontogeny and the fitness consequences of a life history that has childhood as a component (has identified four models based in life history theory that have recently been used to explain the slow growth and extended juvenility of primates in general and humans in particular. The brain growth model asserts that slow growth is a consequence of the amount of learning-based knowledge necessarily acquired by adulthood. Essentially, slow growth provides the time needed to fully program the brain with the information needed for adult competence (Bogin 1999). The pleiotropic model developed by Charnov and colleagues argues that among primates the benefits of continued growth to the
Human Nature, 2014
This massive book (750 pages of text and another 150 pages of references) is a comprehensive, integrative treatment of what is known about human childhood and how to think about it from an evolutionary perspective. It is a landmark reference book, suitable for use by a grad student or scholar, and usable in a graduate seminar, but the book's length and density precludes it being very useful in lower-level classes, and many audiences unfamiliar with aspects it covers will find the terminology and going dense. It feels like a real investment to read and engage such a volume in the day and age of the tweet, not to mention short scientific articles and books. For serious students of childhood, however, reading the book is well worth the investment of time. The author not only gives a clear overview of what he and others have learned about childhood over his long career, he provides an integrative organizing framework that helps to distinguish what we know about childhood from what we can have the tools to investigate. In that sense, this volume is as much a blueprint for future work as a synthesis of past and present findings. Human childhood is a topic of great interest to a variety of disciplines, including psychology, biology, pediatrics and social work, the practitioners of which are all potential readers of Human Nature. The tip-off that this book is written by an anthropologist comes from its organization into four sections: evolution, maturation, socialization, and enculturation. Konner makes it clear that although all species mature and many are socialized during childhood, humans are perhaps the only species whose childhood also involves enculturation. It is a nifty way to include humans within the spectrum of animal continuity yet point to a feature of humans that requires its own set of definitions and analyses. There is no way I can do justice to this book in a single essay. Its multitude of themes, countless examples, and overarching integrative structure defy simple characterization. So I have chosen to highlight the points that I found particularly interesting, provocative, or
American Journal of Psychology, 2021
Piagetian cross-cultural psychology indicated that humans living in preindustrial nations do not develop the adolescent stage of formal operations but stay in the preoperational or concrete operational stage. The stage of formal operations originated among intellectual elites of early modern times and became a mass phenomenon in the 20th century, many empirical indicators suggest. Racial-biological approaches cannot explain these phenomena, but those that combine developmental psychology with socialization theory can. The culture of modern, industrial nations, with their systems of primary and secondary socialization and their systems of occupation and media, stimulate young brains and psyches to use open developmental windows so strongly that they can reach the formal operational stage successfully. Conversely, premodern cultures, across times and regions, do not stimulate humans to develop beyond the childhood stages. Accordingly, unused developmental windows in youth lead to early arrested development there. Both ethnographic data and Piagetian training studies indicate that premodern adults cannot skip stages, being stuck in the childhood stages throughout their lives. However, children born in premodern cultures can develop the formal operational stage when they move to modern cultures in their early years. Only the theory of (open or closed) developmental windows can explain these remarkable phenomena. Data indicate that every stage or substage described by developmental psychology was once the "developmental age" certain nations or social milieus had actually reached.