Bronfenbrenner Model

Proximal Processes

"these are reciprocal interactions between an active evolving biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects and symbols in the immediate environment"

What does that look like?

This is person's immediate interaction other people or he physical envrioment or even informational sources such as books.

For Example: in what ways has your deveoplemnt been shaped by;

What does that look like?

- interactions with your siblings or parents

- interactions with your teachers or peers

- interactions between sibling or parents

- interactions between teachers or peers

- Supreme court decisions; how you ever thought about how you would have been influenced differently if you went to school during segregation?

- your racial, sexual or religious identities

Distal Processes

Distal Processes

factors outside the immediate external environment, including internal forces (like genes) and external forces (like features of the educational system or the broader culture) which modify the proximal processes

Microsystem

Micro: prefix micro is Greek for small, also can be interpreted as small compared to others and focusing on a restricted area

Peers on the Playground

Teachers

Child Care

Bosses

Family

Home

• the immediate environment
• face to face interactions
• actively influencing each other and shaping the world around them

• interactions with your siblings or parents
• interactions with your teachers or peers

Athletic Teams

Adult Leaders

School

Neighborhood Play Area

Roommates

Professors

New Bosses

Day Care

• proximal processes: as an idividual grows up and becomes more complex, so does their suroundings.
• For example a child and their immediate settings

Mesosystem

Meso: middle, in the middle; middling, moderate; between

Family

Classroom

Work

• relations among microsystems
• developmental significance created by the connections across settings

• interactions between sibling or parents
• interactions between teachers or peers
• for a child, they experience expectations of at least two adults, teacher and parents, therefore teachers and parents must communicate the same expectations such as homework, because each setting impacts each other

Peer Group

Religious Setting

• proximal proceses: the roles of an adult women change as the grow and enter new settings

Exosystem

Exo: outside or out of

Mass Media

Parents Place of Work

• Environments that the individual may not directly occupy or may not directly participate in this environment
• Linkage between two or more settings
• People in our lives have experiences in settings that do not includes us, but it still affects us

Neighbors

Community soical services

• Parent's long day at work, could come home tired and not engage with their child like normal
• The Motel Kids of Orange County
• winning the lottery

Local Government

School Board

• Proximal Process: at young age, parent's work place has a huge impact on childrens development; as the grow older it starts to have less of an impact

Freinds Of Family

Macrosystem

Family Origin

Laws

Macro: large, great in size, large in scale

Rules

Laws

• customs and character of the larger culture
• cultural patterns
• external to the individual
• extremely influential on development

• Supreme court decisions; how you ever thought about how you would have been influenced differently if you went to school during segregation?

Cutural Values

Social Conditions

Chores

• Proximal Process: as a child grows the more complex the macrosystem becomes.

for example rules

Curfew

Politics

Chronosystem

Chrono: time, a defined time, a lifetime, a season, a while

• Time and Historical Influences
• Products of our time

• Proximal Process: time shifts our ideas about truth and reality, therefore infulences the experience of our development

Limitations

• Challenges counselors to embrace such complexity in a model
• Trying to understand social world influences on personal development isn't easy
• Requires good analytical ability to make visible invisible structures
• Children can't always help counselors understand their settings or environments
• There is no detailed mechanism; when does a small detail influence development and when doesn't it
• There's no balance; collecting a lot of information, which relation in each sphere has more influence
• Does not provide possible explanations for behaviors

Strengths

• Embraces the uniqueness of an individual and their experiences
• Shows how multiple influence affect development (holistic)
• This theory can be used with other theories to understand and explain one's development (Vygostky)
• Moves from I to We; shows that there is a shared responsibility in regard to a child's development

Summary

This model ask us to view our clients contextually and consider all the interlocking connections amongst the many influences in their lives. As the world grows and becomes more complex, the impact on human development will be connected to that evolution.