Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) was a Russian-American psychologist who contributed a lot of knowledge to the theories of child development. He maintained a holistic perspective from which he proposed an Ecological Systems Theory, one of the most important contributions to evolutionary psychology.

Next we will review the life of Urie Bronfenbrenner in a brief biography , seeing what her most important work consists of and the professional background that was decisive for her development as a psychologist and researcher.

Urie Bronfenbrenner: biography of a pioneer in developmental psychology

Urie Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow, Russia on April 29, 1917. At the age of 6, Bronfenbrenner moved with her family to the United States, where her father would work as director of research at the Institute for the Mentally Handicapped in New York.

In 1938, Bronfenbrenner graduated from Cornell University with a degree in psychology and music, then went on to do graduate work in developmental psychology at Harvard University, and finally earned a doctorate in the same field at the University of Michigan in 1942.

Several years after completing his studies, and during the course of the Second World War , Bronfenbrenner worked as a psychologist within the armed forces of the United States. Many of these experiences were an important basis for the theories he would later develop.

After working in the army, he taught at various universities, on psychology, human development, family studies, among other subjects. Part of his objectives during his professional development were focused on that the theories on human development had a direct impact on both psychology students and on politics and public opinion in general.

It was from this that Bronfenbrenner participated in an important way in the design of programs, where she managed to translate into an operational language the theories on psychological development, specifically in the area of child development, and the lower income socioeconomic sectors in the United States.

What is a system according to Bronfenbrenner?

The Ecological Theory of Systems is the main work of Bronfenbrenner . In it, he plans a perspective of psychological development that brings together different theoretical proposals, not only evolutionary psychology but also social psychology.

In broad terms, it speaks of how an individual develops not only from his genetic load or the education he receives from his nuclear family, but that in this development there are elements in different environments that are also determining. For example, the school, the work environment, the neighborhood, the culture.

This is so because we humans are not only biological but also relational beings, that is, our personality and our psychological development are largely shaped by the characteristics of the systems in which we live and which cause us to have things in common or different with others.

Each system coexists, there is not one over the other but they are interrelated. For this reason, if one system is altered in a major way, this can affect the need for exploration and the readiness for child learning in the other systems.

Likewise, each one contains roles, norms and rules that as a whole are determinant for human development.

The 5 Systems of Ecological Theory

It is an “ecological” systems theory because it focuses on the relationship between different environments and how this relationship determines human development. Currently, the Ecological Systems Theory is considered to be one of the bridges between the biological, psychological and social (biopsychosocial) perspectives of development .

For Bronfenbrenner there are five fundamental systems for individual psychological development, ranging from the family to the political and economic structures: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macro-system and the chronosystem. Very briefly, we review them below.

1. Microsystem

This is the immediate and closest environment. It is fundamentally about our group of belonging: the family, the carers, the school, the neighbourhood, the peers .

2. Mesosystem

It consists of the connection between different environments of the microsystem, for example, between the house and the school .

3. Exosystem

The exosystem is made up of environments that are considered secondary, because they affect development in an indirect way. For example, the place where the parents work .

4. Macrosystem

The latter system is composed of the cultural environment. Sometimes it goes unnoticed, however it is from this that certain norms of behavior are generated that affect other systems. One example is the cultural differences between Western and nonWestern cultures , or the differences between policies and economic systems.

5. Chronosystem

Some time later, Bronfenbrenner added a fifth system to his theory. The chronosystem is made up of the patterns through which our development occurs throughout life and through the various environments mentioned above.

Outstanding works

Among the most representative works of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s thought are Two Worlds of Childhood (1972), Influencing Human Development (1963) and The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (1979).

Bibliographic references:

  • New World Encyclopedia. (2015). Urie Bronfenbrenner. Retrieved May 31, 2018. Available at http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Urie_Bronfenbrenner.