My Development as Interpreted by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory Essays

My Development as Interpreted by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory Essays My Development as Interpreted by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory Essay My Development as Interpreted by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory Essay After analyzing Bronfenbrenner’s theory (1979; Bronfenbrenner Ceci, 1994), I used it to interpret my development.   At the microscopic level (the child’s genetic characteristics, e.g., genetic sex, and predispositions), a probable predisposition towards being athletic interacted positively with my relationships with peers and involvement in team sports (mesosystem influences).   Another mesosystem influence, responsibilities in caring for my younger brothers and sister, influenced my values about children and career goals. Exosystem influences worked to my advantage since, for example, the mass media has glorified athletic success, and macrosystem influences, the general culture and its subgroups, led to a football scholarship, making it possible to attend college.   These influences led to enrolling in a Master’s program to prepare me for working with children having adjustment difficulties. At the time Bronfenbrenner was developing an ecological theory of development (1979), the social learning theory that development was a function of the environment acting on a passive child was dominant (Bandura, 1977).  Ã‚   Bronfenbrenner recognized that the child actively influenced environmental responses (1979).   As examples, happy babies elicit more responsive behaviors from caretakers than babies with more difficult temperaments (e.g., Keller Scholmerich, 1987) and sociable children receive more positive attention than shy children from their peers (e.g., Adler Adler, 1998).   Also contrary to social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), Bronfenbrenner recognized that while controlled experiments were important, we also needed to study children in their natural contexts, as they actually behaved in their homes, schools, playgrounds, etc., and that parents were only one of the important influences on development (1979).   His theory has been an important influence on curr ent theories, which have â€Å"moved beyond a focus on main effects of parenting to efforts to understand complex interactions between individuals and their environments† (Vandell, 2000, p. 700). Bronfenbrenner’s theory (1979) was that development began with the child, prior to environmental influences (the microsystem), then expanded to relationships in the mesosystem, i.e., early environmental influences children experienced directly, typically in their own neighborhoods, e.g., their immediate families, peers, schools.   Development also included indirect influences, the exosystem, e.g., public health services, school policies.   Contrary to Bronfenbrenner’s earlier observations (1970) and also to current research findings (e.g., Werner Smith, 1992), examples of indirect influences also included adults such as neighbors and extended family (1979).   Interactions with adults outside of one’s immediate family (e.g., neighbors, aunts, uncles) have positively influenced the development of children (e.g., Werner Smith, 1992).   The broadest influences, the macrosystem, were both the dominant culture and groups within this culture (e.g., socioeconom ic status, SES). Science is impersonal, and new empirical evidence should result in the modification of existing theory.   As Bandura was influenced by findings inconsistent with social learning theory and developed social-cognitive theory (1989), Bronfenbrenner revised his theory based on findings of behavioral-genetic researchers that there are inherited predispositions for a wide variety of personality characteristics (e.g., depression, Behar, 1980; attitudes, Tesser, 1993; alcoholism, Hill, 1990; shyness, Kagan, Reznick, Snidman, 1988).   In Bronfenbrenner’s revised bioecological theory, the microsystem, the child’s initial state, has been expanded in order to understand the extent to which these predispositions become manifested (i.e., how genotypes become phenotypes) by interacting with the influences in the other systems described above (2005; Bronfenbrenner Ceci, 1994). Influences on my development After my birth, my young mother worked and also returned to high school.   We lived in an urban lower SES environment, with a high crime rate, gangs, and easy access to drugs.   According to Bronfenbrenner (1979), the microsystem (i.e., me) would be interacting with less than favorable influences, beginning with the macrosystem’s (lower SES) influence on the exosystem (e.g., under-funding of schools and community services) and mesosystem (e.g., too little access to parents, too much access to drug-using, gang-member peers).   In an interview (Addison, 1992), Bronfenbrenner remained critical of our society’s failure to establish conditions where work and other settings were designed to incorporate the needs of families:   â€Å"We have to have social policies that enable family life and work to be carried on simultaneously†¦our country is far behind in   making the necessary rearrangements† (p. 17). Based on Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner Ceci, 1994), the genetic predispositions of the child, i.e., the microsystem, interacted with influences from the other levels.   I can make inferences about my own predispositions, based on autobiographical memories of events that occurred after the age of two or three (the ages most of us believe we were at the time of our reported earliest memories, Mullen, 1994).  Ã‚   Since childhood, I remember enjoying and excelling at sports, thus I probably was predisposed to being athletic.   This was a most fortunate predisposition because even in childhood, consistent with research (Adler Adler, 1998), being athletic resulted in high status among my peers, in turn increasing my confidence, and possibly a reason why I was sociable and made friends easily. Untangling predispositions is difficult because, for example, a predisposition for being athletic certainly could have contributed to my becoming sociable, but there also is a genetic predisposition for being sociable (i.e., extroversion,   Owen Sines, 1970), which, in turn, is a reason why children find it easy to make friends (Adler Adler, 1998).   In my case, as in most families, my relatives range from being highly extraverted to being highly introverted, with most being at neither extreme on the introversion-extraversion personality dimension.   Nonetheless, it is likely that a genetic predisposition for being athletic was a reason for being in a favorable position in terms of my mesosystem. Sports also led me to join church-sponsored teams and then middle- and high-school teams.   Despite the TV ads and despite the delusions of some parents, kids from all SES groups are involved, to varying extents, with drugs, especially marijuana (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, 1998).   Usage in my neighborhood was lower among team members than among other groups.   In lower SES neighborhoods (the macrosystem) similar to where I grew up, there was status associated with being in a gang.   The gang members were heavy users of drugs such as crack cocaine, cheaper than the cocaine available in higher SES groups, but nonetheless requiring money that could be made by dealing. Since poverty is a good predictor of criminal behavior (Bjerk, 2007), it isn’t surprising that low SES youth are over-represented, relative to middle-class youth, in the juvenile (so-called) justice system.   In my neighborhood, it wasn’t unusual for a preteen boy with a reputation for using crack to experience his first encounter with the long arm of the law, an influence from the macrosystem.   Contrary to exosystem influences on middle-class youth, the legal services available to low SES youth and the greater penalties given to offenses involving the less expensive crack cocaine probably would result in this preteen boy from my neighborhood winding up in a mesosystem consisting of young future criminals, AKA Juvenile Detention.   Many people are fond of theories of between-group genetic differences (not part of Bronfenbrenner’s theory), which often become best-selling junk psychology books (e.g., Herrnstein Murray, 1994).   Thus it is important to note that early (e.g., Dobzhansky Montagu, 1947, cited in Montagu, 1974) and continued consistent evidence (reviewed in Neisser, 1997) has disconfirmed theories of between-group genetic differences, and whatever genetic predispositions the preteen boy I described had were not a result of his low SES. My own involvement and talent in sports resulted in a football scholarship that made it possible for me to go to college.   There have been newspaper debates about what scholarships in high-profile sports imply about our culture’s values, but, for me, the macrosystem’s interaction with other systems was a blessing.   I had some thoughts about professional football, but my football-playing days ended after a knee injury.   Because of experiences with children, described below, I majored in criminal justice, hoping to find a job working with youthful offenders. My mesosystem includes five younger brothers and a younger sister.   My mom needed to work and she counted on me to care for my brothers and sister in her absence. My relationship with my mom has always been positive, and I did not resent having grown-up responsibilities.   In fact, I felt proud that my mom trusted me (a positive contribution to my mesosystem) and I began to learn that our society devalues the worth of caring for children.   I didn’t and don’t believe that the jobs older children in my neighborhood had – delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, etc. – were as rewarding as caring for my younger siblings.   In the world of adult work, daycare-center teachers and aides are among the most poorly paid workers, suggesting a cultural lack of concern (a macrosystem influence) about where we leave our children (influencing their microsystems). My own positive experiences with my siblings influenced my desire to work with children.   However, after I graduated from college, with a major in criminal justice, I wasn’t able to find such a job.   I became certified as an emergency medical technician, and, in this capacity, work as a firefighter, a job that is satisfying, but does not provide the rewards I had hoped to find in my work.   I enjoy being the father of two children, being involved in their lives and the lives of their friends, and I also enjoy coaching little-league football.   These activities, an important part of my mesosystem, are rewarding and have helped in convincing me to return to my earlier goal of working with children.   Thus, as described above, Bronfenbrenner’s levels of influence ultimately led to my enrollment in a Master’s program in General Human Services, a degree that will qualify me for jobs that involve working with children who are having difficulties in adjustin g to traumatic life events, such as child abuse.