URIE BRONFENBRENNER: BIOGRAPHY, ECOLOGICAL MODEL AND CONTRIBUTIONS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2024

Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917 - September 25, 2005) was a Russian-born American psychologist whose main contribution was the theory of human ecology. In it, people are described as beings with characteristics that develop according to their context and relationships and not as isolated entities.

Although she was born in Moscow, Bronfenbrenner's parents moved to the United States when she was six years old. There she studied music and psychology at Cornell University, received a master's degree from Harvard, and earned her doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan.

Marco Vicente González

Once in the professional world, Bronfenbrenner carried out cross-cultural studies in places like Israel, Europe, China, and the USSR. Her research led her to define human development as a lasting change in the way a person perceives and deals with their environment.

Initially, Urie Bronfenbrenner defined five social subsystems that influence the development of people: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. Later, together with the psychologist Stephen Ceci, she was also able to dedicate herself to research in the field of behavioral genetics.

Biography

Early years

Urie Bronfenbrenner was born on April 29, 1917, in Moscow, Russia. He was the son of Dr. Alexander Bronfenbrenner and his wife, Eugenie Kamenetski. When Urie was a child, his parents had to move to the United States. At first they went to Pittsburgh, but later they moved to Letchworth Village, where his father worked at the New York Institute for the Mentally Handicapped.

Bronfenbrenner, largely influenced by his father, began studying at Cornell University and earned a double degree in music and psychology in 1938, when he was 21 years old. Later he specialized in developmental psychology, a subject in which he obtained a master's degree from Harvard; and finally, he obtained his doctorate from the University of Michigan, in 1942.

However, Urie Bronfenbrenner's research career was cut short as soon as he started, since within 24 hours of obtaining his doctorate, he was recruited into the United States Army, where he had to work as a clinical psychologist in various bodies.

Life after the war

Shortly after the end of World War II, Bronfenbrenner was briefly working as an assistant clinical psychologist for the United States government. However, he soon landed a position as an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, where he had earned his Ph.D.

Not much later, in 1948, he accepted a teaching position at Cornell University, where he taught classes in human development, family studies, and general psychology. Once in this position, his research focused on human development and its relationship with the environment in which the person grows up, this being the focus of the rest of his career.

In the 1960s he had to form a research group to develop ways to improve the lives of children in poverty. Their efforts in this direction started the "Head Start" program, which sought to help the most disadvantaged in the United States.

Contributions and acknowledgments

Urie Bronfenbrenner is especially known for his theory of the ecology of human development. In it, she said that children are influenced by five groups or "systems", each of them going from the closest to the furthest in the person's life. Each of these systems has a series of norms, rules and roles that end up generating the consequences of personal development.

On the other hand, when working with researcher Stephen J Ceci, Bronfenbrenner expanded his theory to include behavioral genetics. Both psychologists pointed out the need to incorporate explicit measures to improve the development of children, since the behavior of the systems closest to their life play an extremely important role in it.

Urie Bronfenbrenner received a host of awards throughout his life for his work, including the James McKeen Catell Award from the American Psychological Society (APA). Personally, he had six children with his wife Liese Bronfenbrenner.

This researcher passed away at the age of 88 in Ithaca, New York, due to complications caused by his diabetes.

Ecological model

The best known contribution of Bronfenbrenner was the theory of ecological systems, which tried to explain the interaction between the internal features of children and the environment in which they develop. According to this theory, children are part of different ecosystems, ranging from the most intimate and close to the largest.

Each of the five systems described by the author interact with each other, having a fundamental influence on the adult life of the child. From the closest to the furthest, the systems described by him were microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem.

Microsystem

It is the most immediate and closest environment in which children live. This includes items such as the person's home and family, their school or daycare, their reference group, and their closest friends.

Interactions with the microsystem mainly involve personal relationships with family, colleagues, friends, teachers and caregivers. It is one of the systems with the most influence on the future development of the child; but at the same time, the way the little one behaves will determine how the microsystem reacts to him.

According to research in this regard, microsystems that provide more support and affection are more effective in developing the full potential of the child. However, the innate characteristics of the person can determine how this system influences them, causing for example two siblings who grow up in the same environment end up becoming very different individuals.

Mesosystem

The mesosystem refers to the interaction between the different microsystems in which the child is involved. It is, in short, a system made up of several smaller ones and therefore includes the relationship between for example the school and the family, the teachers and the classmates, or the relatives and the friends.

According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, if a child's parents are actively involved with their friends (such as inviting friends over to play with them) and get along well with the other microsystems, then the person will develop positively thanks to the harmony and well-being that this entails.

On the contrary, if the child's parents disapprove of the other components of their mesosystem and openly criticize them, then the person will experience emotional conflicts, imbalance and psychological problems, which will lead to ineffective development.

Exosystem

The exosystem has to do with the relationships that exist between two or more environments and situations. At this level, some of the elements do not have to directly affect the development of the child, but they can indirectly influence her by altering some of the components of her micro or mesosystem.

For example, the company the child's mother works for does not have to affect her directly; but it will cause changes in your life through the influence you have on this figure of reference. Other examples of components of the exosystem may be members of the extended family or the neighborhood in which the person lives.

Macrosystem

The last element originally described by Bronfenbrenner was the macrosystem. It is a series of elements and people that are very far from the child's life but that still have a great influence on their development.

Thus, some of the most important elements within the macrosystem are the political system of the country in which you live, your culture, your religion, or the economic well-being of the place where you were born. All these components, despite not interacting directly with the child on a day-to-day basis, largely determine how it develops.

Chronosystem

Although he did not originally include it in his theory, Bronfenbrenner later incorporated a fifth system into his model: the chronosystem. This has to do with the changes and consistencies that the other four show in the child's life, and how they affect her.

For example, the chronosystem can include elements such as changes within the family structure or the employment situation of one of the parents, but also the outbreak of a war or the appearance of an economic crisis.

Contributions to education

Although it may seem extremely theoretical, Bronfenbrenner's ecological model has a host of practical applications, especially within the field of education. This is because, if the influences of different elements in the development of the child are understood, programs can be developed to improve or intervene on them.

Before the emergence of this theory, most experts thought that the only thing that influenced the child was either his immediate environment, or his genes. Thanks to Bronfenbrenner, however, today we know that elements as disparate as the culture or the family's work environment can play a very important role in the well-being of the little ones and their development.

References

1. "Urie Bronfenbrenner" in: Famous Psychologists. Retrieved on: July 16, 2019 from Famous Psychologists: famouspsychologists.org.
2. "Urie Bronfenbrenner" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: July 16, 2019 from Britannica: britannica.com.
3. "Urie Bronfenbrenner" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: July 16, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Urie Bronfenbrenner" in: New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved on: July 16, 2019 from New World Encyclopedia: newworldencyclopedia.org.
5. "Ecological Systems Theory" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: July 16, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.