Urie Bronfenbrenner: biography of this developmental psychologist

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

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

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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 his family to the United States, where his father would work as director of research for the Institute for the Mentally Handicapped in New York.

In 1938, Bronfenbrenner graduated from Cornell University with a degree in psychology and music, later doing graduate study in Developmental Psychology at Harvard University, and finally, he obtained a doctorate degree in the same area from the University of Michigan, in 1942.

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

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

It was from this that Bronfenbrenner participated in an important way in the design of programs, where he 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 United.

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What is a system according to Bronfenbrenner?

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

Broadly speaking, he talks about how an individual develops not only from his genetic makeup or the education that receives from its nuclear family, but in this development there are elements in different environments that are also determinants. For example, school, work environment, neighborhood, culture.

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

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

Likewise, each contains roles, norms and rules which as a whole are decisive for human development.

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The 5 systems of Ecological Theory

It is an "ecological" theory of systems because it focuses on the relationship that exists between different environments and how this relationship determines human development. Currently the Ecological Theory of Systems is considered 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, and they range from the family to political and economic structures: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem and the chronosystem. We briefly review them below.

1. Microsystem

It is about the immediate and closest environment. It is fundamentally about our group of belonging: family, caregivers, school, neighborhood, peers.

2. Mesosystem

It is composed of the connection between different environments of the microsystem, for example, between home and school.

3. Exosystem

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

4. Macrosystem

The latter system is made up of the cultural environment. Sometimes it goes unnoticed, however it is from which certain rules of behavior are generated that affect other systems. An example is the cultural differences between Western and non-Western cultures, or the differences between policies and economic systems.

5. Chronosystem

Later, Bronfenbrenner added a fifth system to his theory. The chronosystem is made up of the patterns through which our development passes throughout life and through the different 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 in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Urie_Bronfenbrenner.