Overview

Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to ""the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time."" To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.

Full Product Details

Author:   Urie Bronfenbrenner ,  Michael Cole
Publisher:   Harvard University Press
Imprint:   Harvard University Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9780674224575

ISBN 10:   0674224574
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   15 September 1981
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Reviews

The Ecology of Human Development should generate more productive research work and more sensible thinking about family policy than we have had in the past...Bronfenbrenner is headed in exactly the right direction for directing research and guiding public action. That is an impressive accomplishment.

The book's purpose: to offer a new theoretical perspective for research in human development. Bronfenbrenner achieves this goal superbly... The synthesis offered in this book is unique...The effect is a perspective on the field of human development that is exciting in its possibilities...This is a usable and practical book...a powerful teaching text...It conveys masterfully the mystery and excitement of scientific investigation. Contemporary Psychology The Ecology of Human Development should generate more productive research work and more sensible thinking about family policy than we have had in the past...Bronfenbrenner is headed in exactly the right direction for directing research and guiding public action. That is an impressive accomplishment. Psychology Today Bronfenbrenner's particular observations are thoughtful and provocative...[The book] provides a welcome antidote for the current spate of premature conclusions about what is and is not important in development. Science

The book’s purpose: to offer a new theoretical perspective for research in human development. Bronfenbrenner achieves this goal superbly… The synthesis offered in this book is unique… The effect is a perspective on the field of human development that is exciting in its possibilities… This is a usable and practical book…a powerful teaching text… It conveys masterfully the mystery and excitement of scientific investigation. * Contemporary Psychology * [The Ecology of Human Development] should generate more productive research work and more sensible thinking about family policy than we have had in the past… Bronfenbrenner is headed in exactly the right direction for directing research and guiding public action. That is an impressive accomplishment. * Psychology Today * Bronfenbrenner’s particular observations are thoughtful and provocative… [The book] provides a welcome antidote for the current spate of premature conclusions about what is and is not important in development. * Science *

Uric Bronfenbrenner's pedantry in laying out formal definitions, hypotheses, propositions, is off-putting until you realize that he is establishing the ground rules for an evolutionary/revolutionary turn in developmental psychology. Notwithstanding the debased currency of the word, his is a truly ecological viewpoint. He sees the growth of a child as a series of nested boxes of micro- to macrosystems involving first dyads and triads of individuals, then larger chunks of society. With acknowledgment to Kurt Lewin's topologies and Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal psychology - and perhaps unconscious homage to Jules Henry, that master of family psychopathology - Bronfenbrenner convinces us that parents, teachers, social scientists have all been blind to the fact that development is not something that happens to a child, but a process that involves the child in a series of potentially transforming interactions with others in particular settings. While psychologists have often paid lip service to these ideas, developmental studies continue to focus on a child in a laboratory, or a white academician in an ethnic ghetto, and perpetuate a deficit -in-the-victim ethos. If something is developmentally wrong, the child is at fault; or if not the child, the family; and so on. Even the classic experiments to determine if there are critical periods of attachment or dependency have focused on the mother or the child, but not on both together. Thus, Bronfenbrenner astonishes and delights us as he painstakingly re-analyzes the work of Rene Spitz, for example, or of Skeels, who had the beneficent idea of putting orphans in wards of mentally-retarded females, to their mutual gain. On an adult level, he reviews the Milgram pain-inflicting experiment and the Zimbardo prisoners-and-guards role-playing scenario. All these experiments - involving interpersonal and larger ecological variables - have been criticized in terms of design, interpretation, and ethics. Bronfenbrenner, moreover, goes so far as to suggest that psychological studies should not necessarily shape social policy, but the other way around. We could, for example, mandate the addition of caring programs to school curricula, where children would learn what it is like to help the aged or the ill. We could emphasize play that simulates the workplace or stimulates fantasy - neither presently encouraged in American schools. Of course, there is a danger of social manipulation which Bronfenbrenner recognizes, for these practices are typical of the Russian and Chinese nurseries that he has studied. But Bronfenbrenner argues that changes can take place in the macrosystem as well: society need not be static. It all sounds eminently sensible, and exciting. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Urie Bronfenbrenner was Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell University. Michael Cole is Professor of Communication and Psychology and Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.

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