Real Life Examples by Timothy Knapp
The microsystem refers to the immediate relationships in which a child’s network is directly influenced. Within this system, a child’s direct contact can include the following structures: family members, social/community/school networks and others whom partake in personal interaction with the child. One example is the relationship between a child and a school counselor. Professionals in the education field, such as a school counselor, are educators within a professional learning community that share a common purpose: student achievement. It is noted that a child’s emotions play an essential role in learning and developing. Thus, a school counselor can have a profound impact on the implications of one’s emotional experiences leaving a permanent trace. Child and counselor dynamics are created out of the awareness of one’s own power to influence others. Establishing personal contact and an optimistic relationship with a school counselor the child will mirror, mimic, and share the action of positive emotions.
The exosystem refers to the external relationships in which a child is influenced indirectly. Within this system, a child’s indirect contact can include culture, community, and society. One example is when a child is displaced due to a natural disaster occurring in a child’s community. The child was not actively involved in the natural disaster but nonetheless is heavily impacted by the result of the disaster. Because of the natural disaster, community members struggle and face detrimental changes to support their daily lives. These struggles are trickled down to the child; in turn deeply impacted the child’s basic needs. With such natural disasters, schools, homes, businesses, community buildings, and so forth could be displaced. Furthermore, even though the child was not directly impacted by the natural disaster, the parent could face economic struggles, emotional stress, and trauma after the tragedy. Thus, the child feels the negative connections of the environmental event.
Real Life Examples by Elizabeth Mullins
Two examples: One example would be seeing how my friends with married parents or with only their mother or father and comparing how that microsystem is different than my own. Another example is comparing how we did and how we feel about school between me, someone who went to a public school to one of my friends, who went to a private, all girls Catholic school.
Real Life Examples by Paige Newman
Bronfenbrenner had four distinct bioecological systems that influenced development. The microsystem is the environment that most immediately and directly impacts the child’s development. The most obvious example of a microsystem is family. For the most part, your family determines the majority of things about you. Children get their culture, their values, and their views on different aspects of life from their families. In the beginning of a child’s life, the family takes up the majority of their time. Children learn to talk by listening to their family, they say words like their family members say them, and they use slang that their family would use. Children model what they see, and when the majority of what they see is their family that is what they do. Family is a great example of a microsystem simply because growing up that is what a child knows best.
The macrosystem describes the culture in which the individual lives. Members of a cultural group share a common identity and most importantly values. Macrosystems usually evolve over time, because future generations can change. A great example of this would be socioeconomic status. If a family lives in poverty, often times the children have more responsibilities than other children their ages. They may have to get a job at an early age, or raise their younger siblings because their parents are working. Or perhaps their parents don’t work, so they have constant interactions with their parents. This affects how the children will grow as an individual. Maybe he will be motivated and responsible beyond his years, or maybe he will learn to steal and to cheat, because that’s what his parents had to do to get by. The same applies for the opposite situation. A child who grows up with extreme wealth may not be raised by his parents; he may have a live in nanny. Children of extreme wealth may also get anything they so desire, and never want for nothing. They may have more opportunities when it comes to jobs and schools because of who their parents are. These children could end up spoiled, or not knowing how to connect with their loved ones because they were raised by other people. The culture of a person can definitely shape who they grow up to be.
Real Life Examples by Amy Malmrose
Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) developed the ecological systems 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, macrosystem, and the chronosystem. The great thing about this theory is that it systematically examines the role of multiple levels of the environment on human development and it also acknowledges that individuals are active within these contexts.
I used the exosytem for my example. The exosystem is the system in which the child plays no direct role, but includes the other people and places that the child may not interact with often. These experiences will have a direct impact on the microsystems the child is part of. The first example of an exosystem would be having a mother or father in the military and having to deploy. When one [aren’t deploys and is gone for long stretches of time, all the responsibilities of running a household fall on the parent that is not deployed. Daily routines change. The stress of running a household alone and the stress of worrying about your spouse being safe can be great. These changes will impact that child in a negative way. Another example of an exosystem (still using the military) would be the recent government shutdown. The child is not directly involved, but if the child had a parent that didn’t get a paycheck or wasn’t able to work, then it would affect that child and the household.
Real Life Examples by Emily Losert
Bronfenbrenner theorized that how we develop is influenced mostly by interacting systems. These systems can influence the individual, and the individual can also influence the systems themselves. Bronfenbrenner called this the bioecological model of human and social development. We live and also interact within the three systems, microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem.
In our microsystem we interact with family, friends, and teachers. It is not limited to just these groups, but in a microsystem we are looking at the people that we interact with on a daily basis and have a major influence on our decisions and beliefs. Our family provides us with morals, values, self-esteem, religion, and other forms of socialization. Our friends play into this because they give us their opinions and attitudes in relation to our socialization and beliefs, and we can choose to accept or reject certain beliefs as a result of peer pressure from our friends. Teachers are also a factor in our microsystem because we spend hours each day, five times a week with them. It is no surprise that lots of socialization occurs at school, as well as the new things we learn in the classroom. In the school environment we grow socially as well as personally, and we learn conflict resolution methods.
As students, teachers are still a major part of our microsystem. We are still growing socially and personally in college, and one day we will be the teachers in another students microsystem. It is important that we realize the importance of this position because our students will learn things from us even when we aren’t necessarily “trying” to teach them. If we get mad very easily, and don’t treat colleagues with respect, and our students see this, they will feel like it’s okay to act in such a way. We need to encourage positive growth in the classroom and influence our children to be accepting of others.
