Bronfenbrenner Urie - The Bronfenbrenner primer : a guide to develecology

This is the first ever introduction to Urie Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Framework written specifically for undergraduate students. The author provides a carefully structured, guided introduction to Bronfenbrenners concepts, their interpretation, and their potential applications. Bronfenbrenners scientific analysis of the role the environment plays in human development earned him a premier place alongside Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Erik Erikson as a contributor to our understanding of developmental processes. His ideas are essential for analyzing how development happens, how it goes astray, how to right it when it does, and how to create environments that will promote healthy development.

The Bronfenbrenner Primer walks students through each component of the framework in a logical order, helping students build a solid, systematic understanding. It describes the background and context that led Bronfenbrenner to develop his framework, illustrates a wide array of potential applications, and provides activities students can do to practice applying the framework to their own experience. Honed over 25 years of teaching Bronfenbrenners ideas, this text will be essential reading for students across the behavioral and social sciences.

Lawrence G. Shelton is a Developmental Psychologist who has taught in the Human Development and Family Studies Program at the University of Vermont since 1971. He has taught and applied Bronfenbrenners ideas in novel ways for the past 25 years in a wide-ranging teaching and consulting career. Shelton has elaborated on and expanded Bronfenbrenners ideas to emphasize the necessity of integrating ecological and developmental perspectives, an approach he refers to as Develecology.

A Guide to Develecology

Lawrence G. Shelton

First published 2019

by Routledge

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2019 Taylor & Francis

The right of Lawrence G. Shelton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shelton, Lawrence G., author.

Title: The Bronfenbrenner primer : a guide to develecology / Lawrence G. Shelton.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018006571| ISBN 9781138037151 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138037168 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315136066 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Bronfenbrenner, Urie, 1917-2005. | Developmental psychology. | Environmental psychology. | Social ecology.

Classification: LCC BF713 .S5147 2018 | DDC 155dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006571

ISBN: 978-1-138-03715-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-03716-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-13606-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

I respectfully dedicate this work to

Urie Bronfenbrenner (19172005)

Armin Grams (19242002)

and all of their generation on whose work we build

A primer is a book presenting the basic elements of a subject, intended for beginning students. The Bronfenbrenner Primer is intended to help you understand one of the core topics in the study of human developmentthe framework of Urie Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Model of Development. I wrote this guide for my students at the University of Vermont. Now I am pleased to provide it to a wider audience. It is particularly gratifying for me to have it appear in 2018, the 101st anniversary of Urie Bronfenbrenners birth.

This book is not an attempt to present and explain Bronfenbrenners extensive body of work, or the development of his thinking across his career. It is neither a critique of his model nor a comparison of his thinking to other theories of development. I will not assess the current state of research using his framework. I intend only to provide an introductory guide to understanding the ecological framework for development proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, as published in his 1979 book, The Ecology of Human Development. In his book, Bronfenbrenner presented a scientific analysis of the role the environment plays in human development. That book and his subsequent writing on the topic earned Bronfenbrenner a premier place as a contributor to our understanding of human development. His work is cited in every developmental textbook, along with the views of Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and others who shape our conceptions of development.

I teach to help students construct an understanding of how people develop. Why does development occur, and how? What influences the course of development? If you want to facilitate development, how can you do that? Over the course of my career, I have studied the works of Freud, Erikson, Sullivan, Piaget, and many other researchers and theorists who consider the processes of development. Each is useful to some degree for understanding some aspects of development. While all of these and many other approaches assume that the environment is a significant determinant of the course or content of development, it is a challenge to find serious consideration of how context shapes development. What are the processes involved? What characteristics of the environment are important in development? How do we compare environments to understand how they lead to differences in development?

As a practitioner, an applied developmental psychologist, who tries to address barriers to development and to promote development, I need to understand not only how people develop, but how the environment shapes development. I need to know what changes in the environment will support development. I have to try to use both a developmental perspective and an ecological perspective to grasp how development has been shaped by the environment and what changes in the environment might shape development in desirable directions.

Bronfenbrenner provides a conceptual framework for understanding the environment half of the processes of development. His framework has been essential to my understanding and my work for many years. The classic and current theorists and researchers of development form one strong core of our understanding, but it was incomplete until Bronfenbrenners work provided a way to conceptualize the environments in which development must occur. This second core is necessary to provide the dual perspective needed to analyze how development happens, how it goes astray, how to right it, and how to create environments that will promote healthy development. Fundamentally, development is the process of transacting with and adapting to the environment we experience as we change biologically.