Urie Bronfenbrenner was a Russian psychologist based in the United States who made decisive contributions to the theory of child development and proposed an ecological approach to the evolution of the individual, giving environmental systems a decisive role in the construction of the person.
His theory, considered one of the most important emerging theories in evolutionary psychology, proposes that changes in the life of an individual are produced, fundamentally, by the influence of the environment, this is multidirectional, that is, it has different effects depending on the culture . it is also multi-context and multicultural, with impact and interaction between different contexts and cultures.
“Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally angry with him or her. “Urie Bronfenbrenner-
Throughout his life, Urie Bronfenbrenner has received several awards for his work. He also co-founded an interesting program in the United States, called Head Start, for preschoolers with cognitive and elderly disabilities.
Urie Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow (Russia and former Soviet Union) in 1917, still very young when his family moved to the United States, where Bronfenbrenner lived until his death in 2005, his father was a physician and became its director. New York Institute for the Mentally Disabled.
Urie Bronfenbrenner studied psychology and music at Cornell University and graduated in 1938; he later studied developmental psychology at Harvard University and earned a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1942.
When World War II broke out, he worked as a psychologist in the U. S. military, an experience that deeply impacted him and gave him an important basis for the theory he later developed.
After the war, Urie Bronfenbrenner devoted himself to teaching and research in various academic centers; throughout his life, he worried that his theories had a practical translation into most people’s lives, so he has been actively involved in the development of programs for children and the most disadvantaged sectors of society.
Urie Bronfenbrenner’s approaches are generally known as the “theory of ecological systems”. He points out that different environments have a decisive influence on the cognitive, moral and relational development of each individual. It proposes that there are four systems that involve the individual and shape their behavior.
These systems are
Urie Bronfenbrenner also refers to the system, or the biological and genetic characteristics of each individual, the chronosystem or effect of historical time, and the globosystem, the incidence of major natural phenomena such as climate change, etc.
Based on this pattern of mutual influence between multiple contexts, Urie Bronfenbrenner stated that different events in the world affect and alter the individual and argued that, for example, the war in Syria had the potential to alter a person’s emotional state, even if the person did not suffer directly.
The main criticism of Urrie Bronfenbrenner’s theories comes from cognitive behavioral currents, which point out that it does not give sufficient importance to biological and cognitive factors in the individual’s development, and question the fact that he has not had a succession of phases. or stages in people’s evolutionary development.
Despite the questions, the truth is that Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory has become a benchmark in evolutionary psychology, it is very important that he has shown and emphasized the influence of environments on people, although he was obviously not the first to do so, he did be able to shape and coherence these events, in addition to a general approach.