Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory.

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory

- Demonstrates the diversity of interrelated influences on the child’s development.

- it was made to explain how the inherent qualities of a child and his environment interact to influence how it will grow and develop

- stressed the importance of studying a child in the context of multiple environments aka ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS in the attempt to understand his development.

MICROSYSTEM

- smallest and most immediate environment

E.g.

Home, school, daycare, peer group

- interactions within the microsystem typically involve personal relationships with family members, classmates, teachers

NOTE: this group affects how the child will grow

- how he will react to people in the microsystem will influence how they treat the child in return

IMPORTANT

- More nurturing and more supportive interactions and relationships will understandably foster the child’s improved development

- Even if 2 child/siblings, even if they have the same ecological systems, they can still experience different systems

MESOSYSTEM

- Interaction of different microsystems which the developing child finds himself in.

- Involves linkages between home and school, between peer group and family, or family and church

- Relationship with the microsystem

EXOSYSTEM

- Linkages between two or more settings

- Lahat pwedeng makaaffect kahit malayo na yung connection

- 1 immediate, 1 not

- Parent’s job and child’s school

MACROSYSTEM

- Largest and most distance

- Cultural values

- Beliefs and ideas

- War kids experiences differ from peace kids

CHRONOSYSTEM

- Useful dimension of time

- Influence both change and constancy

- Family, structure, address, economic cycles, wars

MODULE 1

Perspectives about the self

What is the self?

“To every complex question there’s a simple answer-and it is clever, neat, and wrong!”

- H.L. Mencken

PHILOSOPHY

Elusive, enigmatic, extraordinarily

• To understand the self from this perspective is to study how philosophers conceptualized the self across time

SOCRATES

• BODY AND SOUL

• Body is the physical realm, changing, dies

• Soul is the ideal realm-it survives after death

 Strives for perfection, reason, and wisdom

PLATO

• Reason- our divine essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths

• Physical Appetite – our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire

• Spirit or passion- our basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and empathy

ST. AUGUSTINE

• Immaterial soul vs. body

• Theologian

• Neoplatonism

• Connected Plato’s idea of the self to the tenets of Christianity- immortal soul

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

• Followed Aristotle

• Matter and Form

• Matter- material universe

• Form- essence, what it is

• Require each other to exist

• Form and body cannot be separated

• Soul- differs living from non-living

• The body has life existence actualized by the soul

RENE DESCARTES

• Modern perspective of the self

• Duality also specifically, the mind and body

• Recognized the interaction of the two

• Tried to localize the self by identifying a part of the brain

 Pineal gland- an effort to connect the mind to a physical body

JOHN LOCKE

• The self is consciousness

• Empiricism

• Tabula rasa- experience writes on, knowledge comes from experience

• Consciousness as an important part of a coherent identity

• The essence of the self is its conscious awareness

• It’s not contained in a substance or a soul

DAVID HUME

• There is no self

• The only content of our experiences are impressions and ideas

• The self is a bundle of perceptions. Identity does not last since our sensations are mobile and changing

IMMANUEL KANT

• Our primary experience of the world is not in terms of a disconnected stream of sensations

• WE CONSTRUCT THE SELF