Chapter One Handout: Introduction/Methods

Chapter One Handout: Introduction/Methods

From the PowerPoint Presentation:

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory:

0.  Individual: sex age health etc.

1.  Microsystem: Within this system the person has direct interactions with parents, teachers, peers, and others.

2.  Mesosystem: This system involves the linkages between microsystems such as family and school, and relationships between students and peers.

3.  Exosystem: This system works when settings in which a child does not have an active role influence the student’s experiences.

4.  Macrosystem: This system involves the broader culture in which students and teachers live.

5.  Chronosystem: The sociohistorical conditions of a student’s development.

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Developmental Methods

Approach / Description / Advantages / Disadvantages
Cross-Sectional / Comparison of children of different ages at the same point in time. / Requires less time; less costly than longitudinal study. / Cannot study individual patterns of development or the stability of traits; subject to cohort effects
Longitudinal / Repeated testing of the same group of children over an extended period of time. / Can examine the stability of characteristics. / Requires a significant investment of time and resources; problems with participant attrition; can have age-history confound.
Cross-Sequential / Observation of children of different ages over an extended period of time. / Avoids cohort and age-history confound effects / Even longer and more expensive than longitudinal studies

Activity: Understanding the Contexts of Development

Height: because your culture emphasized a well-rounded diet, you had a good variety of nutrients

Logic: because your parents were math professors, you were encouraged to develop logic skills

Personality: Because you grew up in the 20th century, you are comfortable with people of many ethnic backgrounds

IQ: because you grew up in the 20th century, you had the opportunity to go to a community college

Weight: because you grew up in a giant mansion, your need to walk a lot more kept your weight down

Emotion: Because you grew up rich and pampered you never learned to control your emotions

Language: because the US mandates education, you became literate

Relationships: Because you grew up Amish, you are very community–oriented

Health: because you grew up in the 20th century, you had vaccinations and grew up in good health

Which contexts for development are:

1.  Biosocial, Cognitive or Psychosocial?

2.  Socioeconomic, Cultural or Historical?

Note: Do not confuse ethnicity and SES, the text is making a point that they are hard to disentangle, but ethnicity is NOT part of SES, it is part of your Cultural context for development!