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Urie Bronfenbrenner

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Urie Bronfenbrenner
Born(1917-04-29)April 29, 1917
Moscow, Russia
DiedSeptember 25, 2005(2005-09-25) (aged 88)
Ithaca, New York, U.S.
OccupationPsychologist
Known forCo-founder of the Head Start program

Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917–September 25, 2005) was a Russian American psychologist, known for developing his Ecological Systems Theory, and as a co-founder of the Head Start program in the United States for disadvantaged pre-school children.

Life

Urie Bronfenbrenner was born on April 29, 1917 in Moscow, Russia, as the son of Dr. Alexander Bronfenbrenner and Eugenie Kamenetski Bronfenbrenner. When Urie was 6, his family moved to the United States. After a brief stay in Pittsburgh, they settled in Letchworth Village, the home of the New York State Institution for the Mentally Retarded, where his father worked as a clinical pathologist and research director. After his graduation from Haverstraw High School, Bronfenbrenner attended Cornell University, where he completed a double major in psychology and music in 1938. He went on to graduate work in developmental psychology, completing an M.A. at Harvard University, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1942. Twenty-four hours after receiving his doctorate he was inducted into the Army, where he served as a psychologist in a variety of assignments for the Army Air Corps and the Office of Strategic Services. After completing officer training he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Immediately after World War II, Bronfenbrenner worked briefly as Assistant Chief Clinical Psychologist for Administration and Research for the Veterans' Administration, before beginning his work as Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1948, he accepted a professorship in Human Development, Family Studies, and Psychology at Cornell University. In the late 1960s to early 1970s, Bronfenbrenner served as a faculty-elected member of Cornell's Board of Trustees. With his wife, Liese, Urie Bronfenbrenner had six children: Beth Soll, Ann Stambler, Mary Bronfenbrenner, Michael Bronfenbrenner, Kate Bronfenbrenner, and Steven Bronfenbrenner. Beth Soll became a choreographer, dancer, writer, and teacher at Hofstra University, Columbia University, and Manhattanville College. His daughter, Ann Stambler became a psychiatric social worker in Newton, Massachusetts. Mary Bronfenbrenner became a teacher of German in the Ithaca Public School system. Michael Bronfenbrenner moved to Seal Beach, California, working as a video artist/professional. Kate Bronfenbrenner was appointed the Director of Labor Education Research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Steven Bronfenbrenner became director of an arts administration company in San Francisco, California. At the time of his death, Bronfenbrenner was the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology in the Cornell University College of Human Ecology. Bronfenbrenner died at his home in Ithaca, New York, on September 25, 2005, due to complications from diabetes. He was 88.

Ecological Systems Theory

Main article: Ecological Systems Theory

Urie Bronfenbrenner is generally regarded as one of the world's leading scholars to focus on the interplay between research and policy on child development. Bronfenbrenner suggests child development research is better informed when institutional policies encourage studies within natural settings and theory finds greater practical application when contextually relevant[1]. This perspective is well defined by Bronfenbrenner, who states, "...basic science needs public policy even more than public policy needs basic science" (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 8, italics in original).[2] It is from this vantage point that Bronfenbrenner conceives his primary contribution, Ecological Systems Theory, in which he delineates four types of nested systems. He calls these the microsystem (such as the family or classroom); the mesosystem (which is two microsystems in interaction); the exosystem (external environments which indirectly influence development, e.g., parental workplace); and the macrosystem (the larger socio-cultural context). He later adds a fifth system, called the Chronosystem (the evolution of the external systems over time). Each system contains roles, norms and rules that can powerfully shape development. This system is strikingly similar to the social networks approach of James Comer who was the first to put forward a model for school reform, the School Development Program, and upon which nearly every school reform model to follow is built or is influenced by. Comer describes how children are nurtured in nested environments as depicted by a series of platforms of increasing size[3], the lowest and largest of which represents supporting institutional policies. The next level up is the secondary social network of schools, workplaces, and organizations providing access to recreational activities and needed health and social services. The second level from the top is the primary social network which consists of religious centers and clubs, neighbors, friends and relatives, and the immediate family or primary caregivers. At the top and center of this system is innermost environment of the child which ostensibly plays as profound a role in development as anything external to the body. The inner environment of the child is conspicuously missing from Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and perhaps illustrates the point that Bronfenbrenner's work focuses not directly on the child but on how aspects of the much broader macrosystem directly impinge on what Comer calls the primary social network of the child.

Awards

Publications

  • 1972. Two Worlds of Childhood. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21238-9
    • Two Worlds of Childhood: US and USSR. Penguin (paperback, 1975). ISBN 0-14-081104-4
  • 1973. Influencing Human Development. Holt, R & W. ISBN 0-03-089176-0
  • 1975. Influences on Human Development. Holt, R & W. ISBN 0-03-089413-1
  • 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-22457-4
  • 1981. On Making Human Beings Human. Sage Publications Inc. ISBN 0-7619-2711-3
  • 1996. The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-82336-5. Lony Tunes

Notes

  1. ^ Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of childhood (1974). Child Development, 45, 1-5.
  2. ^ Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  3. ^ Comer, J.P., Joyner, E.T., & Ben-Avie, M. (Eds.) (2004). Six pathways to healthy child development and academic success: The field guide to Comer schools in action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
  4. ^ 1993 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award
  5. ^ "The American Family: Future Uncertain". Time. December 28, 1970. Retrieved 17 September 2009.

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