URIE BRONFENBRENNER ECOLOGICAL THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

In his Ecological Theory of Development, Bronfenbrenner postulated that in order to understand human development, the entire ecological system in which growth occurs needs to be taken into account. Through the subsequent revisions, Bronfenbrenner acknowledged the relevance of biological and genetic aspects of the person in human development. In this regard, this article discusses his framework with a critical focus on how the system influences the development of human beings.

BRIEF BACKGROUND OF URIEBRONFENBRENNER’STHEORY

Bronfenbrenner Urie was born in Russia in 1917. He, later on, went to the United States at the age of six years. While in the United States, he attended high school in Haverstraw, New York. Thereafter, Urie went to Cornell University in 1938 where he graduated with a double major in Psychology and Music. Bronfenbrenner received a Master’s degree in education from Harvard University in 1940 and a Doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1942. After completing his Doctorate studies he was recruited in U.S. Army as a psychologist. After working for the army as a research psychologist, he returned to the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of psychology.

Bronfenbrenner was a psychologist who is known for developing a theory which linked a child’s social and environmental setting to how the child learns and develops. He is also known for his research in child development and specifically for his Ecological Systems Theory. In this model, a person’s social setting is categorised into four different systems. These systems include a microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and a macrosystem. Later, a fifth system was added, known as the chronosystem.

The term ecology refers to the environment, therefore the ecological systems theory which was recently re-named as Bio ecological system theory emphasises on a child’s own biology as the primary environment fuelling her development. As regards to theecological environment, Bronfenbrenner (1979) asserts that the ecological environment is seen as a set of nested structures, each inside the next like a set of Russian dolls.

Ecological model is the process and conditions that governs the life long course of human development in the actual environment in which human beings live.

Ecological systems theory: As earlier stated, the ecological systems model consists of five stages, this system is composed of five socially organised subsystems that support and guide human development. Each system depends on the contextual nature of the person’s life and offers an ever-growing diversity of options and sources of growth. The ecological system stages influence one another and also influences the individual as much as they are influenced by the individual.

MICROSYSTEM

Bronfenbrenner indicated that microsystem is the immediate child environment. It is also seen as the structures with which the child has direct contact including: family, school, neighbourhood, peer groups. It is also characterised with the pattern of activities, roles and interpersonal relations experienced by developing person in a given face-to- face setting with the particular physical and material features. In the same vein Berk (2000) says that the microsystem is the closest environment for a child and includes the structures with which the child maintains direct contacts. For instance, the child learns much from people surrounding him or her. If it is at school, much is gotten from his or her classmates and significant others

Additionally, at this level the relations among persons happen in two ways; that is from the child and towards the child. For example, a child’s parents have an influence on how he or she perceived the world including his beliefs, values and personality, but the child can also as well influence the parents thinking basing on his or her beliefs. Bronfenbrenner calls this bidirectional influence and he points out how such relationships exist on the levels of all environments. The interaction within the layer of the structures and the interaction of the structures between the layers is the key to his theory.

THE MESOSYSTEM

This layer provides the connection between the structures of the child’s microsystem. It comprises the linkages and processes taking place between two or more settings containing the developing person. ‘Examples; the connection between the child’s teacher and his parents, between his church and his neighbourhood, Garbarino (1990) explains the mesosystem by saying that it consists of the relationships that the child’s and a young person’s Microsystems have between themselves. Important are first of all the relation between home and mother and child and clinic, home and kindergarten, as well as home and school interaction.

EXOSYSTEM

The exosystem defines the larger social system in which the child does not directly function. The structures in this layer impact the child’s development by interacting with some structure in his/her microsystem. Parent workplace schedules or community- based family resources are examples. The child may not be directly involved at this level, but he does feel the positive or negative force involved with the interaction with his own system.

The main exosystems, that indirectly influence youth through their family include, school and peers, parents’ workplace, family, social networks, mass media, neighbourhood community, contexts, local politics and industry. Exosystems can be empowering for example social welfare in Zambia a high quality child-care program that benefits the entire family or they can be degrading, example excessive stress at work impacts the entire family in a number of ways. For instance, the family may experience food shortages in an event the parent is expelled from work due non-performance. Furthermore, absence from a system makes it no less powerful in a life. For example, many children realise the stress of their parent’s workplaces without ever physically being in these places.

MACROSYSTEM

The macrosystem layer may be considered to be the outermost layer in the child’s environment. While not being a specific framework, this layer consists of cultural values, customs, and laws. In addition, it can be used to describe the cultural or social context of various societal groups such as social classes, ethnic groups, or religious affiliates. This layer is the outermost layer in the child’s environment.

The effects of larger principles defined by the macrosystem have a cascading influence throughout the interactions of all other layers. For example, if it is the belief of the culture that parents should be solely responsible for raising their children, that culture is less likely to provide resources to help parents. This, in turn, affects the structures in which the parents function. The parents’ ability or inability to carry out that responsibility toward their child within the context of the child’s microsystem is likewise affected.

The macrosystem influences what, how, when and where we carry out our relations. For example, antenatal care program and other health services at the hospital or clinic may positively impact on a young mother through health care, -vitamins, and other educational resources. It may empower her life so that she, in turn, is more affective and caring with her new-born. In this example, without an umbrella of beliefs, services, and support for families, children and their parents are open to great harm and deterioration. In a sense, the macrosystem that surrounds us helps us to hold together the many threads of our lives.

CHRONOSYSTEM

The other stage of the ecological model and perhaps the last one is the Chronosystem. Munsaka and Matafwali (2013: 136-137) write:

In this component of the model, Bronfenbrenner focuses on showing how children’s development is influenced by sociohistorical changes that take place over time….the chronosystem is about how children’s development is influenced by generational changes that happen over time. A classic example of this is the way families used to be organised in the seventies or even eighties in most African societies.

During those time periods, women were not expected to be in any gainful employment; their primary task was to take care of the home and raise children. Nowadays, this has changed as women are expected to be in formal employment and make financial contributions toward the running of families.

It is clear from the above that a chronosystem encompasses change or consistency over time not only in the characteristics of the person but also of the environment in which that person lives. For example changes over the life course in family structure, socioeconomic status, employment, place of residence, or the degree of heftiness and ability in everyday life (Elder, Modell and Parke, 1993). In, a nut shell, human development cannot be fully understood by using an approach which is fragmented. This is in agreement with the views of Sigelman and Rider (2006: 23) “we cannot study human development by taking snapshots; we must use a movie camera and understand how one event leads to another”.

The Bronfenbrenner ecological model can be illustrated as follows

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system

CRITICISMS OF BRONFENBRENNER ECOLOGICAL THEORY

1. Merits

• The chronosystem encompasses the dimension of time as it relates to a child’s environment. This includes the timing of various events in child’s life that may impact on his/her development: the death of a family member, moving, the arrival of puberty, to mention but a few.
• Integrates multiple influences on child development
• It helps Educators to foster societal attitudes that value all work done on behalf of children
• Creates a conducive environment for teachers to work towards supporting the primary child-adult relationship
• It is integrative in nature where Schools are obliged to create an environment that welcomes and nurtures families

2. Bottlenecks

One of the notable weaknesses of Urie’s theory is its dominance on the development of children unlike in adults. It is argued that Bronfenbrenner’s focus upon development, particularly, in children makes application of ecological systems theory to adults somewhat more difficult than might otherwise occur.

Further, as already alluded that ecological systems theory focuses upon the environmental aspects of development with a particular focus on youth (Bronfenbrenner, 1999), however, from an observer’s perspective, there is little the observer can do about an individual as framed by the microsystem aside from their individual interactions. Additionally, the macrosystem and chronosystem are too large for a teacher or an educator to encompass.

Nevertheless, the macrosystem and chronosystem can be interpreted through the understanding of various sociological, environmental and time factors that influence an individual (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). In order to attest that this is a weakness, Bronfenbrenner (1994) acknowledges that one needs to go beyond the simple labels of class and culture to identify more specific social and psychological features at the macrosystem level.

The other setback of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is that of its temporal impact it has on generations. This is very common especially to countries that are prone to wars and economic turmoil (Elder, 1998). In this regard, it can be deduced that the chronosystem and macrosystem impacts would eventually alter or damage a person’s individual development.

Furthermore, a generally assumption is that Urie Bronfenbrenner models has been well received by most of the scholars. However, this theory also has encountered some criticism throughout the years. Most criticism centres on the difficulties to empirically test the theory and model and the broadness of the theory that makes it challenging to intervene at any given level. Some examples of critiques of the theory are:

• Challenging to evaluate all components empirically.
• Gives too little attention to ‘biological and cognitive factors in children’s development
• Does not address developmental stages that are the focus of theories like Piaget’s and Erikson’s
• Fails to see that the variables of social life are in constant interplay and that small variables can change a system
• The systems around children are not always linear.
• Difficult explanatory model to apply because it requires extensive scope of ecological detail with which to build up meaning that everything in someone’s environment needs to be taken into account.
• Failure to acknowledge that children positively cross boundaries to develop complex identities.
• Tendency to view children as objects.
• Inability to recognise that children’s own constructions of family are more complex than traditional theories account for.
• Preoccupation with achieving “normal” childhood without a common understanding of “normal”.
• Misses the tension between control and self-realisation in child-adult relationships; children can shape culture.
• Underplays abilities, overlooks rights/feelings/complexity.

APPLICATION TO URIE BRONFENBRENNER’S THEORY ON THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

With regard to the mesosystem, Garbarino, (1990) in his writing indicated that, the family is the closest, most intense, most durable, and influential part. The influences of the family extend to all aspects of the child’s development; language, nutrition, security, health, and beliefs are all developed through the input and behaviour related feedback within the family. Actually, the students that come to our schools are largely a product of the family they are a part of.

Teachers need to be able to deal with a great variety of family systems in understanding their students. It is advisable to be eclectic as teachers, for example a teacher can call for a family pack where parents are invited to attend lesson with their children once in a while. The gesture helps to provide valuable information to the teacher, the teacher will be able to plan adequately what is required for the learner based on the child’s upbringing by the parents and significant others.

In today’s society, the extended family is dying slowly, even in these nuclear families the situation is that parents stay very few hours at their homes, a system where a mother and father are working. Single parent families, generation-skipping families, and other non-traditional groupings are more common today than traditional families. Hence it is prudent that when coming up with the curriculum, issues of counselling and guidance should be considered high to compensate for a loss of good values and norms from their parents due to less interaction.

Another common force that has changed the family landscape in our society is divorce. Children of divorced parents often have a split family life; for example, a father may be with the children for the weekend and a mother during the week, or any number of other situations. Divorce is an excellent example of the type of interaction between systems that Bronfenbrenner writes about.

The divorce arrangement can have a profound effect on the family and the development of the child, but it is often a product of society, decided by a judge, and enforced by social services. In turn, the divorced family affects the community and society because by the nature of divorce social attitudes change and the social perception of family is modified. The school is also affected by the changes in a divorced family. Where does the report card go and who comes to the parent-teacher meeting, who attends the family pack?

A number of other systems: community, religion, school, society, and cultural forces from within the mesosystem and the exosystem directly affect the family. Society and the culture of both the family and the neighbourhood have an influence on the child’s perception of the family’s place in the community. The family can affect the community through its need for services and its contribution, for example, in the current situation in Zambia, bursaries in learning institutions, social welfare organisations and other non-governmental organisations (NGO) providing services to such as children labour a lot to ensure that these services are provided.

Bronfenbrenner provides an interesting explanation of breakdowns that have occurred at the societal level that have been attributed to problems within mesosystemic relationships. He explains that technology has changed our society. In most of the schools in Zambia and beyond a learner develops the use of mobile phones as early as grade one even then, instead of using them in a constructive manner, it is abused.

Phones are used for porn viewing and other bad vices. Mission institution strives to restrict the use of phone while most government school promotes it despite its negative aspect. The theory in this regard reminds teachers to come up with effective behaviour modification techniques that will help students to learn accordingly. Schools should set rules that curb exposure to such misuse of technology.

Another strength of Bronfenbrenner’s theory lies in effective environmental preparation. The most effective learning comes from simple but versatile materials and environments which extend the child’s imagination and can be adapted by children to suit their learning needs and level of understanding. Dowling (2000, p. 10) referred to this as an informational environment which supports children’s ability to make and learn from mistakes, discover the best way of doing things and learn how to make decisions. The power of the environment is portrayed through Malaguzzi’s (1996, p. 40) words:

“We consider the (physical) environment to be an essential constituent element of any theoretical or research in education … we place enormous value on the role of the environment as a motivating and animating force in creating spaces for relations, options, and emotional and cognitive situations that produce a sense of well-being and security”. Hence basing on Bronfenbrenner theory/teacher and other stake holders are called up to ensure that the immediate learning environment of the learner is highly stimulating.