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Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory Summary

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Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological systems theory developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner is one of the approaches in developmental psychology that explains how individuals’ relationships with others and with the environment affect their development. Bronfenbrenner classified one’s contexts of development into five subsystems- the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem and the chronosystem. According to Bronfenbrenner, the systems are like circles within circles. (Bronfenbrenner, 1994) The microsystem, the innermost part, refers to interactions, activities and behaviours experienced by the child in the immediate context. For example, settings like family, school and neighbourhood. The mesosystem is composed of the interrelationships between the settings involved in the microsystem. This can be the linkage between teachers and parents, school and workplace. The next level, the exosystem, includes relationships between immediate settings with at least one event that affect the child indirectly, such as the linkage between the parent’s workplace and home. The macrosystem refers to characteristics of the cultural context, including the values and beliefs in each of the systems. For example, customs of a particular culture, individual’s opportunity …show more content…

Lastly, the outermost part, the chronosystem, encompasses changes or experiences that occurs during the individual’s lifetime in the characteristics of the person and also in the environment in which the

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