PSYCHOLOGY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING ::URIE BRONFENBRENNER' s ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS THEORY.

Urie Bronfenbrenner, Russian-born American psychologist is best known for having developed human ecology theory. The human ecology theory also known as the ecological systems theory, in which individuals are maturing not in isolation. Individuals are developing within the context of relationships, such as those involving families, friends, schools, neighbourhoods, and society.

Bronfenbrenner divided the entire ecological system in which human growth occurs into five subsystems that are organized socially:

1. The microsystem,

2. The mesosystem,

3. The exosystem,

4. The macrosystem, and

5. The chronosystem.

Viewed from the innermost system outwards, Bronfenbrenner’s model illustrates the following systems:

A child lies in the middle of the image. Each circle that surrounds the child is a different layer or environmental system that affects the child's growth and development.

Microsystem — This is the first, and closest, layer of the nested systems which encompasses an individual’s human relationships, interpersonal interactions and most immediate surroundings. Thus, depicting the relationship between an individual child and his/her parents, siblings, and school environment.

Mesosystem — Moving outwards, the second layer surrounding the microsystem encompasses the different interactions between the characters contained within the microsystem. This could include, for instance, the relationships between a child’s family and their schoolteachers. For any interaction to qualify as part of the mesosystem, it must be a direct interaction between two features of the bio-ecological system which influence the development of the individual child.

Exosystem — The third layer is the exosystem which incorporates elements of the bio-ecological systems which do not directly affect the child but may have an indirect influence. For instance, if a parent were to be made redundant or have their working hours reduced, this would then indirectly affect their child in that such events would create parental stress and reduce the family income.

Macrosystem — The outermost, “macro” layer of the bio-ecological model encompasses cultural and societal beliefs, decisions and actions which influence an individual child’s development. This might include, for example, religious influences or parliamentary legislation.

Chronosystem - Lastly is the chronosystem. This system includes major life transitions, environmental events and historical events that occur during development. Moving to another city is one example, as is the first moon landing being televised.

The application of social ecological theories and models focus on several goals: to explain the person-environment interaction, to improve people-environment transactions, to nurture human growth and development environments, and to improve environments so they support expression of individual's system's dispositions.

Urie's work led him to define human development as a lasting change in the way a person perceives and deals with his or her environment. A child is viewed as a growing dynamic entity that progressively moves into and restructures an environment. The environment in turn exerts an influence on the individual, requiring a process of reciprocity between person and environment. 

Urie’s Ecological Systems Theory proposed that human development unfolds in a nested set of systems, involving cultural, social, economic and political elements, not merely psychological ones. These systems and their interactions can nurture or stifle optimal development. Policies and programs can play a major role in shaping these systems – thus potentially promoting human health and well-being. This perspective transformed the study of human development. Among other influences, it encouraged more developmental scientists to examine both naturally occurring and deliberately designed experiments in the real world to illuminate the influences of contexts on human development, and particularly on child development.

Moreover, Bronfenbrenner realized that the developmental process varies by place and time and that public policy affects the development of humans by influencing the conditions of their lives.

With American developmental psychologist Stephen J. Ceci, Bronfenbrenner extended his theory to behaviour genetics. They recommended that explicit measures of the environment in systems terms be incorporated, and they proposed the existence of empirically assessable mechanisms—proximal processes through which genetic potentials for effective psychological functioning are actualized. They hypothesized that when proximal processes are weak, genetically based potentials for effective psychological functioning remain relatively unrealized and, as proximal processes increase in magnitude, potentials become actualized to a progressively greater extent.

Process Person Context Time Model

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s most significant departure from his original theory is the inclusion of processes of human development. Processes, per Bronfenbrenner, explain the connection between some aspect of the context or some aspect of the individual and an outcome of interest. The full, revised theory deals with the interaction among processes, person, context and time, and is labelled the Process–Person–Context–Time model (PPCT). Two interdependent propositions define the properties of the model. Furthermore, contrary to the original model, the Process–Person–Context–Time model is more suitable for scientific investigation.

As per Bronfenbrenner:

"Proposition 1: In its early phase and throughout the life course, human development takes place through processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects and symbols in its immediate environment. To be effective, the interaction must occur on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time. These forms of interaction in the immediate environment are referred to as proximal processes.

Proposition 2: the form, power and content and direction of the proximal processes effecting development vary systematically as a joint function of the characteristics of the developing person, of the environment-immediate and more remote-in which the processes are taking place and the nature of the developmental outcome under consideration."

Processes: Processes play a crucial role in development. Proximal processes are fundamental to the theory. They constitute the engines of development because it is by engaging in activities and interactions that individuals come to make sense of their world, understand their place in it, and both play their part in changing the prevailing order while fitting into the existing one. 

The nature of proximal processes varies according to aspects of the individual and of the context—both spatially and temporally. As explained in the second of the two central propositions, the social continuities and changes occur overtime through the life course and the historical period during which the person lives. Effects of proximal processes are thus more powerful than those of the environmental contexts in which they occur.

Person: Bronfenbrenner acknowledges here the relevance of biological and genetic aspects of the person. However, he devoted more attention to the personal characteristics that individuals bring with them into any social situation. He divided these characteristics into three types' demand, resource, and force characteristics. 

Demand characteristics are those that act as an immediate stimulus to another person, such as age, gender, skin colour, and physical appearance. These types of characteristics may influence initial interactions because of the expectations formed immediately. Resource characteristics are those that relate partly to mental and emotional resources such as past experiences, skills, and intelligence, and to social and material resources (access to good food, housing, caring parents, and educational opportunities appropriate to the needs of the society). Finally, force characteristics are those that have to do with differences of temperament, motivation, and persistence. 

According to Bronfenbrenner, two children may have equal resource characteristics, but their developmental trajectories will be quite different if one is motivated to succeed and persists in tasks and the other is not motivated and does not persist.

 As such, Bronfenbrenner provided a clearer view of individuals’ roles in changing their context. The change can be relatively passive (a person changes the environment simply by being in it), to more active (the ways in which the person changes the environment are linked to his or her resource characteristics, whether physical, mental, or emotional), to most active (the extent to which the person changes the environment is linked, in part, to the desire and drive to do so, or force characteristics).

The context, or environment, involves four of the five interrelated systems of the original theory: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem.

Time: The final element of the PPCT model is time. Time plays a crucial role in human development. In the same way that both context and individual factors are divided into sub-factors or sub-systems, Bronfenbrenner and Morris wrote about time as constituting micro-time (what is occurring during the course of some specific activity or interaction), meso-time (the extent to which activities and interactions occur with some consistency in the developing person’s environment), and macro-time (the chronosystem). Time and timing are equally important because all aspects of the PPCT model can be thought of in terms of relative constancy and change.

This rightly talks about the concept of what happens in a school, as the teacher is….... so, the child learns. Or, as the parent is……. so, the child adopts. 

In today’s scenario, bringing up a blooming and curious child, where there are several distractions is too difficult.

To reap best we need to work hard as a parent, teacher and as a responsible individual. Providing an individual with a better environment is very important, may not be a strict environment where children are stressed but a healthy one with proper limits. Providing too much freedom is also not very good for a proper development. 

Too much of anything is bad!

The entire cycle of development is connected and so is the universe. Children are the ‘Ambassadors of World Peace.'