Human Growth and Development / Unit 1 HGD 0047 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Five Systems
The idea
Bronfenbrenner's model names five systems around the individual. The microsystem holds the settings a person directly experiences: family, school, peers, health care. The mesosystem is the interaction between microsystems, such as a parent–teacher conference. The exosystem affects the person indirectly: a parent's workplace policy or the local school board. The macrosystem is the culture's beliefs, laws and economic system. The chronosystem is all of it moving through historical time.
In practice
One six-year-old's life mapped system by system, from her classroom to a pandemic that changed every setting at once.
Where people slip
The individual sits at the centre and is active within every system, genes included. Influence runs both ways: the environment shapes the person and the person shapes the environment. The exam lists both ecological theory and Bronfenbrenner by name, and a question about a parent's job affecting a child points to the exosystem.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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