Brofenbrenner's Ecological Paradigm Analysis

Matthew Wawrzynski and Katherine Madden, using Brofenbrenner’s ecological paradigm, conducted a study in 2012 that aimed to examine the mesosystem of honors students’ living experiences. The study hypothesized that there would be reported significant differences in living experiences between mesosystems for honors students at Midwestern University. The study examined three various living arrangements: living-learning community, honors floors, and non-honors floors. The living learning community was the living experience that reported the most rewarding, educational, and fulfilling experience as compared to the results of the other two living arrangements. This ties back to Brofenbrenner’s idea that a supportive, intellectual microsystem will …show more content…
He steered the field away from a tunnel vision of biological explanation and opened up the field’s view to societal and ecological influences. Brofenbrenner included influences such as time within an individual and within a given society, the idea of parental work influencing the developing child, and even how neighborhoods, communities, offices, industries and legislation can stimulate or disturb development. While Brofenbrenner’s theory is applicable to all age groups, it is clear that his focus was on developing children and furthermore, how the educational system can use his ecological model to monitor and investigate childhood development and potential adversities that may arise. There is also very little discussion as to how Brofenbrenner’s ecological model has held up cross culturally. However, his framework for this theory is from a stance that embraces diversity and encompasses how diversity explains various developmental pathways, so one could assume this theory is universal when it comes to cross cultural studies. Brofenbrenner maintains much of his focus on the various levels society has on a developing individual, however in his initial draft of the ecological model, Brofenbrenner didn’t include biological, psychological or behavioral implications for development. He later critiqued his own work and stated that he would add these implications to make amore comprehensive approach to his theory, but at the time of his theory development there was plenty of research being conducted on biological implications on childhood development. An ideal direction for this ecological paradigm would be to move towards a model that encompasses all of Bofenbrenner’s aspects of development, but also includes ideas of resilience, biological influences, more in-depth psychological influences, mental health influences, and behavioral influences. Currently Brofenbrenner merely discusses that these factors