Answer to Question #320354 in English for Dimakatso

Question

In your own words, explain why context has an impact on the development of young children , based on Bronfenbrenner theory

Answer 1

American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner was critical of previous theories of child development. He argued that studies of children in unfamiliar laboratory environments with one other person, usually a stranger, were ecologically invalid (See Mary Ainsworth’s 1970 experiment of the ‘Strange Situation’).

Bronfenbrenner (1974) claimed most earlier studies were ‘unidirectional’, meaning that the laboratory studies observed the influence of A on B (e.g. a stranger/mother with a child), rather than looking at the possible influence of the child on the stranger/mother, or any other third party’s influence.

Bronfenbrenner maintained that these laboratory features of research are not characteristic of environments that children actually live and develop in.

Bronfenbrenner recognized there are multiple aspects of a developing child’s life that interacts with and affects the child. His work looked beyond individual development, taking into account wider influencing factors and the context (or ecology) of development. He proposed the ‘Ecological Systems Theory’ based on these dynamic interactions that the environments have on the developing child.

Bronfenbrenner’s (1974) perspective has some resemblance to the works of Albert Bandua’s social learning theory and Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in which the environment is explicitly or implicitly considered as a crucial mechanism in development.