Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory
All relationships are bidrectional. Explain.
Adults affect children's behaviour, but children's biologically and social influenced characteristics - their physical attributes, personalities, and capacities - also affect adults behaviour.
How do elements of the macrosystem support child development?
The priority that the macrosystem gives to children's needs affects the support they receive at inner levels of the environment - e.g. countries that require generous workplace benefits for employed parents and high-quality standards for child care.
Mesosystem
The second level of the environment, the mesosystem, encompasses connections between microsystems, such as home, school, neighbourhood, and child-care.
Chronosystem
The temporal dimension of the ecological systems model, the chronosystem, in which changes occur within the child and in their environment that select, modify and create many of their settings and experiences. The environment is ever-changing.
Under what circumstances does the mesosystem support development?
When there are connections between microsystems - for example, links between home and child-care in the form of visits and cooperative exchanged of information.
The effect of third parties in the microsystem:
other individuals in the microsystem affect the quality of any two person relationship - if they are supportive, interaction is enhanced.
Informal Organisations in the Exosystem
Parents' social network - friends and family who provide companionship, advice, financial assistance, etc.
Formal Organisations in the Exosystem
Parents' workplaces, religious institutions, community health and welfare services, etc. - for example, flexible work schedules, maternity leave, etc. can support child rearing.
The Exosystem
The exosystem consists of social settings that do not contain children but that nevertheless affect children's experiences in immediate settings
Microsystem
The innermost level of the environment, the microsystem, consists of activities and interaction patterns in the child's immediate surroundings.
The Macrosystem
The outermost level of the environment, the macrosystem, consists of cultural values, laws, customs and resources.
Ecological Systems Theory
View the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment.
Five Environmental Structures
1. Microsystem 2. Mesosystem 3. Exosystem 4. Macrosystem 5. Chronosystem
