The Bronfenbrenner Primer A Guide to Develecology

This is the first ever introduction to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Framework written specifically for undergraduate students. The author provides a carefully structured, guided introduction to Bronfenbrenner’s concepts, their interpretation, and their potential applications. Bronfenbrenner’s 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 analysing 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 Bronfenbrenner’s ideas, this text will be essential reading for students across the behavioral and social sciences.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction to Urie Bronfenbrenner

2 From Ecology of Human Development to Develecology

3 The Framework

4 The Person and Development

5 Activities

6 Dyads and Relations

7 Important Characteristics of Relations

8 Roles

9 Settings

10 Ecological Transitions

11 Essentials of Systems Theory

12 Microsystem

13 Proximal Processes

14 Links and Relations between Settings

15 Mesosystem

16 Developmental Trajectory

17 Exosystem

18 Macrosystem

19 Chronosystem

20 Research Design

21 Bronfenbrenner’s Examples

22 Using Bronfenbrenner’s Framework

23 Exercises and Applications

24 Eco-Analysis

25 Develecology 001: Bronfenbrenner Made Plain

Appendix 1: Selected Works of Urie Bronfenbrenner Pertinent to Develecology

Appendix 2: Directory of Definitions, Propositions and Hypotheses