Urie Bronfenbrenner was generally regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in the field of developmental psychology. His ecological systems theory holds that development mirrors the influence of several environmental systems, and it categorizes five environmental systems with which an individual interacts; Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem, and Chronosystem.…
Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of development revolves around the concept that an individual is impacted by several distinct relationships during their lifetime. According to this theory, these relationships are broken down into five levels that represent an individual’s five major interactions during their life; microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. These five systems are based on the ecological theory that these continually changing environmental systems impact the individual throughout childhood and into adulthood. This paper will demonstrate Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of development by looking at how it shaped this author’s development and influenced the direction that was taken in her life.…
Renowned psychologist Erik Erikson is best known for his theory of psychosocial stages of personality development. Unlike Freud, Erikson’s theory spans a person’s entire lifespan, from childhood to old age. One of the main elements of Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory is the development of ego identity (Cherry, 2013). Ego Identity is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction (Cherry, 2013). Erikson believed that our ego identity is constantly changing due to new experiences and information we acquire in our daily interactions with others (Cherry, 2013). The stages of Erikson’s theory are concerned with becoming competent in an area of life (Cherry, 2013). Erikson believed that if a stage is handled well the person will feel a sense of mastery or is often referred to as ego strength or ego quality (Cherry, 2013). He also believed that if a stage is handled poorly the person will emerge with a sense of inadequacy (Cherry, 2013). The eight stages as taken from my module 3 discussion board post where I put forth that I believed personality is developed in stages and used Erikson’s stages for my example are:…
Erik Erikson discusses psychosocial stages, and believed that personality progressed through a series of stages, with certain conflicts arising at each stage. Success in any stage depended upon successfully overcoming these conflicts He placed importance on the role of culture and society and the conflicts that can take place within the ego itself, whereas Freud emphasised the conflict between the id and the superego. According to Erikson, the ego develops as it successfully resolves difficulties of a specifically…
The theory of Erik Erikson is that the early childhood years are very important stages of the development of the personality of an individual. This theory followed many of the principals of theories developed by Sigmund Freud, in relation to the id, ego and superego and the theory of sexuality in infancy. Erikson disagreed with the theory Freud used in describing personality based only on sexuality, and where Freud was under the belief that personality was developed by the age of five years, Erikson believed that personality continued to develop past the age of five (Davis & Clifton, 1995).…
The key element within Erikson's theory was ego identity. According to Erikson, "the ego identity was our conscious sense of self development through all processes of social interaction" (Ratti, 2008). Within Erikson's key elements were eight stages that unfold and develop as we go through life. "In each one of the stages a distinctive developmental task confronts individuals with a situation that must be worked through in order to have a constructive outcome" (Santrock, 2008, p.23).…
Ego development theory was created by Erik Erikson. Erikson believed our personality is formed from opposites such as dependant or independent, aggressive person or passive person, are just an example of a few. Erikson stated that some of these traits you are born with others are learned. Erikson…
Life span development is referring to the many faceted layers of human growth; these layers are characterized through multi-cultural, multi-contextual, multi-disciplinary, multi-directional, and plasticity. Each of these characteristics of development brings about their own implications (Berger, 2011). Life span development is multi-cultural, meaning that there is a system of development within cultures; each culture, be it a nation, an ethnic group, or a society, plays an important role in individual development (Berger, 2011). Life span development is multi-contextual, meaning that there are multiple contexts in an individual’s life span that play a role in their development. These include an individual’s climate, surrounding sounds, population, family patterns, and historical conditions which are ingrained into an individual’s life (Berger, 2011). Life span development is multi-disciplinary, which means that there are many different disciples, or concepts related to the developmental process of an individual. Some of these disciplines include psychology, biology, sociology, anthropology, historical, and education. All these forms of discipline, or domains, have…
In Human Development Psychology, there are different theories on how an individual grows and develops. One of the most well-known theories is the Ecological Theory of Urie Bronfenbrenner. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) is today credited and known in the psychology development field for the development of the ecological systems theory. The theory explains the way everything in a child and their environment affects the child development. It emphasises the importance of the relationships between the social contexts in which the child lives and the people who influence their development (Paquette & Ryan, 2001). In early childhood, a child’s development is influenced by various factors, thus Bronfenbenner’s Ecological Theory shows how a child grows and matures. There are four different levels that influence a child to develop in life as a person as shown in Fig 1. The first level begins with the child and their immediate environment than move on to larger environment, showing that the immediate and the outside are as important in the development of a child. The first level is the microsystem (immediate environment that a child lives or contacts such as parents, teachers and neighbours), then mesosystem (linkage between microsystems) such as connections between family and school, thirdly the exosystem (environment in which a child is not involved, such as parents workplace) and the fourth level is the macrosystem (involve the society, cultures and government). According to Bronfenbenner family plays the most crucial part in the development of a child’s abilities. A family influence a child’s resilience to adversities and also provides different levels of risk factors as family functioning changes (Oswalt, 2008).…
Eric Erickson organized life into eight stages that extend from birth to death (many developmental theories only cover childhood). Since adulthood covers a span of many years, Erikson divided the stages of adulthood into the experiences of young adults, middle aged adults and older adults. While the actual ages may vary considerably from one stage to another, the ages seem to be appropriate for the majority of people. One of the main elements of Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory is the development of ego identity. Ego identity is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction. According to Erikson, our ego identity is constantly changing due to new experience and information we acquire in our daily interactions with others. In addition to ego identity, Erikson also believed that a sense of competence also motivates behaviors and actions. Each stage in Erikson’s theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life. If the stage is handled well, the person will feel a sense of mastery, which he sometimes referred to…
He emphasizes the role of culture and society and the conflicts that arose in each stage of development. Through the development, one develops his/her personality as they successfully resolve crises that are distinctly social in nature. Erikson puts emphasis on adolescent period because he feels that it is the integral stage that is crucial for developing a person’s identity. Just like Freud, Erikson had a strong believe that through one’s lifespan, personality develops in a systematic manner and builds on the previous stage (Erikson, 1950). Most important, success in one stage built the confidence in a person to face the next stage while failure in a stage results to stagnation and in old age despair (Abbott,…
The development of the ecological theories that shape development was theorized by Urie Bronfenbrenner. He described the four systems that contain settings and factors that influence a child’s development. His Bioecological Systems Theory, shows while biological changes in a child are the primary sources of development, the external factors are huge contributors as well. It is stated that the body supports and directs all body actions and operations influenced by the outward interaction with the environment. That explains why the child thrives with positive results with proper input or negative repercussions with negative input. “…
The purpose of this paper is to think of a particular time in my childhood and apply Bronfenbrenner’s five systems to that particular time. Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory in child development suggest that five levels of the environment simultaneously influences us as children. Bronfenbrenner believes that we cannot fully understand the phenomenon of continuity and bio-psychological characteristics of a child without considering how we are influence by each level of our environment. The 5 levels he mentions are, microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem and Chronosystem (Feldman 2011).…
Development theories are psychological stages of life. Erik Erikson is best known for his stages of psychosocial development and coining the term ‘identity crisis’. Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is one of the best known theories of personality. Though similar to Freud, Erikson believed that personality develops in a series of 8 stages. Unlike Freud’s theory of psychosocial stages, Erikson’s theory describes the impact of social experiences across the whole lifespan.…
An American Russian psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner introduced his theory on human development called the Ecological Systems Theory 1979. Bronfenbrenner was born in 1917 and was also a co-founder of the Head Start program in the United States for disadvantaged pre-school children. Bronfenbrenner developed the Ecological Theory to explain how everything in a child and the child 's environment affects how a child grows and develops. He labeled different aspects or levels of the environment that influence children 's development, including the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem. Bronfenbrenner stated in 1979 "...basic science needs public policy even more than public policy needs basic science" (European Association for Counselling, 2011). From that statement he went on to develop his primary contribution of the Ecological Systems Theory, in which he holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems identifying five such systems. These systems are described below obtained from (European Association for Counselling, 2011)…