Level of Ecological Systems Theory that include all the immediate direct effect on a person

Exosystem

An exosystem refers to one or more settings that do not involve the developing person as an active participant, but in which events occur that affect—or are affected by—what happens in the setting containing the developing person. For example, a woman gets a promotion at work which means more travel and time at corporate conferences. As a result, her partner has to spend more time at home caring for the children and the children have fewer opportunities to interact with their mother. The partner and the children have no contact with the woman’s work setting, but decisions made there have an impact on their lives.

The concept of the exosystem contributes to the metaphor of the nested systems. Conditions that may influence one or more members of a person’s network of significant relationships can also influence the developing person. The influence can also go in the other direction. Something can happen at the level of the microsystem that trickles up into settings, where the person is not involved. For example, a teenager is seriously injured when she is riding in a car with another teen who had been drinking alcohol. The impact of events like this across many communities transcends the family, and becomes the focus of new organizations, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and practices to encourage groups of teens to identify a “designated driver.”

Models of Social Organization

Tenets of social organization theory inform understanding of the exosystem and macrosystem. Social organization pertains to how people in a community interrelate, cooperate, and provide mutual support. It includes social support norms, social controls that regulate behavior and interaction patterns, and the networks that operate in a community (Mancini & Bowen, 2013). Community members share norms that govern behaviors and expectations that provide for both licit and illicit activities (Furstenberg & Hughes, 1997); different subgroups of individuals may be more tolerant of activities and behaviors considered unacceptable by the general population. These subgroups may be characterized by particular demographic characteristics (i.e., age, ethnicity) and by psychological characteristics, including attitudes about gender, sense of self, and attributes of others.

The variation and complexity of a community is reflected in its structure and the processes or actions engaged in by its members. Community-level networks play a significant role in promoting the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being of individual community members and families (Mancini & Bowen, 2013). Informal relationship networks involve voluntary relationships, such as those with church members, friends, and neighbors, which are characterized by mutual exchanges and reciprocal responsibility. Formal support networks involve obligatory relationships, such as those associated with agencies and organizations. These two networks often interact and are essential for providing support for older adults who experience abuse. Understanding community capacity, or the degree to which network members demonstrate a sense of shared responsibility for the welfare of the community and its individual members (Bowen, Martin, Mancini, & Nelson, 2000), provides insight about the strengths and weaknesses of networks and the ways in which they coalesce to confront situations that threaten the safety of older adults.

Three Environmental Systems

The proposed framework includes three systems of influence at each developmental phase: chronosystem, exosystem, and mesosystem. In the Bronfenbrenner model, after the family, the nearest and most direct environmental system, the mesosystem, is given first and primary consideration among the extra-familial systems. However, the ordering of environmental systems is reversed in our framework, given our primary concern with the impact of broad sociocultural events on cohort differences. Thus, we first consider the chronosystem that is concerned with the changes and continuities over time in environments that impact the individual’s development. Two dimensions of the chronosystem are considered. First, the simplest form of chronosystem focuses on domain-specific life transitions. Two types of transitions have been distinguished in the psychological and sociological literatures (Baltes, 1979; Riley et al., 1972): normative (school entry, puberty, work entry, marriage, child bearing, retirement) and non-normative (death or severe illness, divorce, winning the lottery). These transitions are usually specific to a particular life domain (marriage, work), although there may be spillover to other domains. These transitions are usually defined by a circumscribed relatively brief time period during which they occur. In contrast, a second dimension of the chronosystem deals with cumulative effects of an entire sequence of transitions or events occurring over a more extended time period in the individual’s life (e.g., war, depression, technological advances). The impact of such historical or sociocultural life course events on individual development has been an important focus of the work of social psychologists such as Elder (1974), Stewart (2003), and Helson and Moane (1987). However, the developmental outcomes of interest in the prior work have primarily been factors such as well-being, stability, and success in work and marriage, rather than cognitive performance. Of critical importance is the expectation that the relative impact of these long-term historical or sociocultural events will vary depending on the developmental phase of the individual. Thus, the same historical event may result in very different outcomes for different cohorts experiencing the event at different developmental phases.

The exosystem deals with environments that are not directly experienced by the individual, but are important environments for significant others, such as the target individual’s parents, spouse, or friends. Such environments “external” to the developing individual are referred to as exosystems. As the Kahn and Antonucci (1980) model of convoys of social support suggests, the significant others in the individual’s life would be expected to change across the life course, progressing from parents, to spouses and extended family, friends, and colleagues. The external environments in the exosystem that impact individual development would thus vary across the life course as the significant others change. In the child literature, the parents’ work environment has been shown to impact childrearing practices (Kohn & Schooler, 1983), occupational aspirations of adolescents (Mortimer & Kumka, 1982), and curricular activities (Morgan et al., 1979).

In the Bronfenbrenner model, the exosystem focuses primarily on the concurrent environments of significant others (e.g., parent’s work environment) that may impact the developing individual. However, our framework also includes transitions occurring across the adult lives of significant others that may influence the individual. For example, the father’s educational or occupational experiences as a young adult and occurring in a particular historical may influence subsequent intellectual functioning of the offspring (Hauser & Featherman, 1976).

The mesosystem involves the principal contexts or environments in which individual development takes place. Given the focus on childhood, the family is considered the primary context of development in the Bronfenbrenner model. However, in our framework, we include the family as one of the facets of the environments within the mesosystem. Other environments experienced directly by the individual include work, leisure/social context, and media or technology-based contexts. The relative impact of these various environments is expected to vary across the life course and to interact with the personal characteristics of the individual.

It is assumed that long-term cumulative events primarily impact individual development indirectly as mediated by environmental factors in the meso- and exosystem and interact with the personal characteristics (e.g., personality, attitudes, lifestyles) of the individual who is a member of the cohort under investigation.

Ecological Systems Model of Creativity Development

The Ecological Systems Model of Creativity Development suggests that four systems—the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem—have a far-reaching impact on an individual's development of creativity (Yeh, 2004). The microsystem specifies inherent and learned personal characteristics: mainly knowledge, dispositions, and skills. These personal characteristics are the most fundamental to the generation of a creative product, and they directly affect the four stages of the creative process, namely, preparation, incubation, insight, and evaluation. Based on information processing theory, the main tasks in each of stages are defined as illustrated in Fig. 1. Notably, the four stages are interactive and can be a cycled process before a creative product is successfully produced. The mesosystem, meanwhile, consists of family and school experiences. These two subsystems interact with each other and greatly influence the creative potential of a person throughout his or her childhood and even into his or her teens. However, as the creative person grows up, these influences may become more indirect and perhaps less influential. The exosystem is comprised of organizational factors that relate to an individual's work, including the people, events, and things within an organization. This system mainly interacts with the creative person and influences the creative process both directly and indirectly. Finally, the macrosystem refers to a social culture and milieu, including the values, laws and customs within a culture. This system has a substantial impact on the evaluation of a creative product. From a mature adult perspective, the four layers of the system interact with one another to shape one's creativity. However, only the microsystem and exosystem directly influence the current creative process (see Fig. 1).

Ecological systems model of creativity development

This is the most recently proposed confluence model; it suggests that four systems – the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem – have a far-reaching impact on an individual's development of creativity. The microsystem specifies inherent and learned personal characteristics: mainly knowledge, dispositions, and skills. These personal characteristics are the most fundamental to the generation of a creative product, and they directly affect all stages of the creative process. The mesosystem, meanwhile, consists of family and school experiences. These two subsystems interact with each other and greatly influence the creative potential of a person throughout his or her childhood and even into his or her teens. However, as the creative person grows up, these influences may become more indirect and perhaps less influential. The exosystem is comprised of organizational factors that relate to an individual's work, including the people, events, and things within an organization. This system interacts with the creative person and influences the creative process both directly and indirectly. Finally, the macrosystem refers to a social milieu, including the values, laws, and customs within a culture. This system has a substantial impact on the evaluation of a creative product. From a mature adult perspective, the four layers of the system interact with one another, but only the microsystem and macrosystem directly influence the current creative process.

Spillover

The concept of spillover links ecological theory and social role theory. Ecological theory addresses the potential impact of the exosystem, experiences within settings in which the developing person is not directly involved, but that have consequences for the person. In an effort to explore that idea Lawson et al. (2014) considered the daily positive spillover from mothers’ work to their adolescent children’s emotional mood and physical health symptoms. They used a daily diary measurement approach. On 8 consecutive days, study participants were interviewed at the workplace, and then parents and their adolescent children were interviewed that same evening by phone. At work, mothers were asked if they had a particularly positive or negative experience at work since the previous day. In the home interview, adolescents were asked to report on their mother’s mood upon returning from work (e.g., happy, tired, angry, stressed, sad), their own positive or negative emotions that day; their experience of six physical symptoms (e.g., headache, stomach ache); and their sleep quality. The measurement approach links experiences for the mother at her workplace to her child’s perceptions of the mother when she returns home as well as the child’s own emotional and physical well-being on that day. The daily report limits reliance on global memories and generalizations about perceptions of mothers’ moods or child’s moods. What is more, the daily diary approach captures fluctuations over days, providing an opportunity to determine how much variability there is in the mother’s workplace experiences and how that may impact the child’s emotional and physical health.

Concepts for Describing the Couplings Between Virtual and Physical Environments

A useful starting point for describing the connections between virtual and physical worlds is Bronfenbrenner’s analysis of the micro-, meso-, and exosystem contexts of human development [126,134] (see Fig. 2.4). Microsystems are place-based settings such as homes, schools, and childcare centers. Mesosystems contain two or more settings in which a person actively participates. Exosystems contain a setting where the individual is an active participant (e.g., a child’s home) and one or more settings that affect the person even though she/he is physically absent from them (e.g., a child’s parent’s workplace). Micro-, meso-, and exosystems are all part of the larger societal macrosystem that influences a person’s development and behavior over the life course (the chronosystem). In Bronfenbrenner’s framework, mesosystems and exosystems contain two or more real (or physically grounded) settings. Links between two or more place-based environments form real–real (R–R) units. However, some mesosystems and exosystems are established by joining a physical environment (e.g., a person’s dwelling) and one or more cyberspaces (e.g., a teenager texting friends from her bedroom, while her father participates in Second Life on his home computer). I refer to these real–virtual mesosystems and exosystems as R–V units [135].

Fig. 4.2 shows my childhood home and elementary school, an important R–R mesosystem for me during my early years in Miami, Florida. These places were about three miles apart and I would bike from home to school and back every weekday. The lower portion of the figure illustrates an R–V mesosystem where an airplane passenger is using in-flight WiFi to check social media. The digital sites she visits while flying are, in effect, embedded in or tethered to the physical (real) environment of the aircraft.

The relationships between people’s real and virtual environments vary in relation to certain attributes of R–V units. First, the number of cyber communications or virtual settings embedded in a physical setting may be small or large. The R–V connections for people who participate in several different cyberspaces from a particular place (e.g., home, office, airplane, car) can be denoted as {R1–V1… Vn} where V1… Vn represents the multiple virtual settings linked to a host environment (R1). Fig. 4.3 illustrates multiple R–V mesosystems connected to the same place-based environment, from the vantage point of a child who is viewing her friends’ photos using the cell phone app, Instagram, and also messaging them on Facebook from her bedroom at home.

Second, the psychological salience or importance of a particular real environment (R1) to an individual or group, as well as the salience of each virtual setting (V1… Vn) linked to that place, varies on a continuum from low to high. Cyberspaces such as Second Life or personal blog sites where people spend large amounts of time performing activities that are important to them would be highly salient. The larger the number of salient virtual settings linked to a real environment, the greater the impact of cyber influences on occupants of the place-based setting. In Figs. 4.3 and 4.4, the relative importance of the virtual environments linked to a place-based setting is shown by their relative sizes of the circles depicting them. Fig. 4.4 shows three different cyberspaces accessed by an adult on his or her home computer—a personal blog, Facebook page, and LinkedIn profile. The different sizes of the virtual environments shown indicate that the personal blog page is most important to the individual followed by the Facebook and LinkedIn sites, respectively.

Third, R–V couplings can be viewed from the vantage point of individuals or groups in a particular setting. For instance, the impact of virtual environments on a family can be described in terms of the total R–V connections for all members of the household. A child’s own cyber engagements would consist of R–V mesosystems, whereas those of her parents would constitute R–V exosystems from the child’s perspective (see Fig. 4.5). By considering the number and salience of cyber involvements for all family members (or team members in a workplace), it is possible to estimate the overall impact of R–V connections on the activities and cohesiveness of the group as a whole. A key issue raised by the collective R–V engagements of group members is whether or not they disrupt social relationships and activities in the host environment [97,136].

Fourth, the interface between real and physical environments may be entirely autonomous or dependent on active monitoring and mediation by members of the host setting. In the Internet of Things (IoT), objects in different locations communicate with each other through data-streaming sensors and software applications. Once the sensors are programmed, the digital communications between them function automatically and without human intervention. As noted earlier, GPS navigation systems rely on invisible cyber links between satellites and cars. Digital electricity meters, on the other hand, permit family members to monitor online reports of their energy consumption periodically, even though data transmissions between home meters and utility company computers are continuous and fully automated. In contrast to autonomous cyber links between objects in different places, many R–V units require individuals to actively navigate the interface between their virtual and physical settings. When high school students log onto Wikipedia to work on a school project from home, they are creating an R–V connection and determining the content and duration of their virtual experience (e.g., deciding which Wikipedia articles to read while online). Or, when a college instructor asks students to refrain from using social media in class but some decide anyway to check Facebook or email on their cell phones during lecture, each is trying to influence the boundary of cyberspace and the host environment either by preventing or creating a link between them.

Fifth, for both automated and human-mediated R–V units, the relations between physical and virtual environments may be harmonious or in tension with each other. In the IoT, unreliable or failed cyber links between objects (e.g., satellites in space and vehicles on roadways) reflect potential or actual conflicts between the physical and virtual world. When IoT objects communicate reliably with each other in ways that support the host setting, they form a complementary R–V unit. Similarly, human-mediated links between real and virtual environments may be complementary, neutral, or conflicted. Complementary R–V units are meso- and exosystems where the virtual setting supports the goals and activities of the host environment. Neutral R–V units are those where the virtual setting neither supports nor detracts from the activities of the host setting. Conflicted R–V units are those where the virtual setting disrupts members’ relationships and activities in the host setting (Table 4.2).

Table 4.2. Complementary, Neutral, and Conflicted Real–Virtual {R–V} Units

•

Complementary—the virtual setting supports the goals and activities of the host (place-based or “real”) setting

Neutral—the virtual setting neither supports nor detracts from the goals and activities of the host setting

Conflicted—the virtual setting disrupts the goals and activities of the host setting

An example of a complementary R–V mesosystem is when someone visits public safety websites to become better informed about and prepared for natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and fires. Also, mobile communications and GPS sensors in smartphones can help the victims of disaster events gain rapid access to survival and recovery resources during and after an emergency. In other contexts, children’s exploration of the Internet on their home computers can enhance their efforts to acquire new information and excel in their schoolwork, whereas classmates who lack R–V connections from home are disadvantaged by not having access to online resources. On the other hand, a child’s use of social media on a computer or smartphone may be so time-consuming and distracting that the quality of her academic work suffers, resulting in a conflicted R–V unit. In workplaces, recreational surfing of the Web can lower employees’ productivity, undermine team performance, and spur resentment among coworkers and supervisors—personal and social by-products of a conflicted R–V unit. Neutral R–V connections have neither positive nor negative consequences for activities in the host environment. For instance, if children and parents temper their social media use at home so that it does not detract from academic or parental activities, then the consequences of participating in these R–V units would be neutral for them individually and for the family as a whole. Core dimensions of R–V environmental systems are summarized in Table 4.3.

Table 4.3. Core Dimensions of Real–Virtual {R–V} Units

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Categories of cyberspaces (episodic cyber communications, virtual behavior settings, and virtual communities)

Number and variety of R–V units linked to a physical place

Psychological salience (importance) of R–V units

R–V mesosystems and exosystems

Complementary, neutral, and conflicted R–V units

Theoretical perspective

The bioecological model of human development forms the theoretical rationale for this chapter. Central to this model are the concepts of proximal settings, proximal processes, and a system of nested environments, namely, microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. The microsystem is where we spend most of our time and have the most enduring relationships, namely, home, neighborhood, school/childcare, work. The mesosystem is a combination of two or more microsystems. For example, a child’s mesosystem might be home and the school. The exosystem is outside of one’s daily activities but may still have an effect on the individual. For example, a parent’s work place is part of a child’s exosystem. While the child rarely if ever goes to the parent’s work place, its proximity can affect the amount of time parent and child spend together. The macrosystem is not a physical entity but nevertheless affects what happens at the microsystem level. It includes culture, income, government policies, and laws. The chronosystem is the time period in which one lives and may also include life’s transitions.

The microsystems of home, school/day care, and neighborhood are where children spend most of their waking time and therefore play a critical role in development. These are the places where the child most closely interacts with the physical environment and where important social relationships form with family, teachers, other adults, and peers (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998).

The school as a microsystem is the focus of this chapter. During the time a child is in school he or she engages in numerous daily interactions with other people (peers and adults) and with the physical environment. Bronfenbrenner describes these interactions as proximal processes and identifies them as the “engines of development” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The child engages in a variety of activities during the school day including listening, writing, using technology, eating, physical activity, and personal hygiene. Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization of the school as a microsystem implies that there is an interrelationship between all aspects of a school. The activities, social interactions, and physical spaces are all part of the school as a microsystem. Another way of stating this relationship is that the physical environment of a school is the child’s third teacher (Weinger, 1998), with the classroom teacher and the child’s parents as the other two teachers.

16.4.2 Bronfenbrenner’s eco-system model of support

The authors have considered many models in an attempt to describe how companion animals and animal-assisted activities can be understood as an important dimension of support. A theoretical “eco-system” model developed by Bronfenbrenner (1989) seems applicable in describing the support mechanisms that people use for overcoming the stresses of having a chronic and/or terminal illness (see Figure 16.5). This model consists of a series of nested contexts called a microsystem, exosystem and macrosystem. The original model has been utilized to describe many significant challenges confronting families, including divorce, and child abuse (Belsky, 1980). This model views a person’s life as a social unit embedded within various formal and informal social units (Shea and Bauer, 1991).

Bronfenbrenner’s model explains behavior similarly to the way a naturalist would view nature. An individual’s ecosystem may be visualized as a series of layers that are all connected. The most central layer is what he called the microsystem. This system incorporates all the variables that either can support or contaminate the growth of an individual within his or her home. A child or adult who has a functioning support system at home may adapt more effectively to his/her illness. The impact of the medical challenge on any family appears dependent on the number of factors imposed by the condition. These factors may include the family resources (e.g. financial, job), the relationships within the family and the social support system within both the family and the community.

The exosystem consists of all other support systems found outside the home. Financial, medical and emotional supports found in formal and informal neighborhood opportunities can make the life of a person with a chronic illness more livable or less of an ordeal. These options may be found formally at a work site, clinics, various religious institutions, as well as numerous community social service agencies. Informally, a person’s sense of well-being may be lifted as a direct result of the contributions made by extended family members and close friends. Having good neighbors and family members who will frequently visit or call can tremendously impact one’s perceived quality of life. Also, support groups, social clubs and churches can help enlarge one’s support from the person’s exosystem.

Finally, the macrosystem is the outermost layer of a human being’s ecosystem and incorporates the larger culture of the world in which we all live. This macrosystem may represent the culture’s bias and reaction to various illnesses and conditions; it is within the cultural macrosystem that the stigma of an illness is developed. According to the tenets of an ecosystem model, there is a positive correlation with the resources secured and an individual’s ability to function and adapt more effectively.

Bronfenbrenner urges mental health professionals to view the psychological health of any individual as a direct result of the forces operating within the systems that he or she lives within. The model permits simultaneous consideration of numerous factors within the microsystem, the exosystem and the macrosystem which can help an individual adapt to illness.

2.1 Ecological Theory

The fields of education and psychology have come to embrace a systems-based approach to understanding those variables that influence how an individual behaves, develops, and learns over time and across multiple settings. This approach is grounded in ecological theory. Based on the work of Bronfrenbrenner, ecological theory is concerned with the interaction between an individual and various contextual systems. Systems include the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. The microsystem is concerned with the individual and his or her immediate environment (e.g., a child interacting within a particular classroom), the mesosystem involves the interrelation between major systems in the individual’s life (e.g., between home and school), the exosystem is concerned with environments not directly related to the individual yet influencing his or her life (e.g., a parent’s workplace), and the macrosystem includes overall cultural or subcultural patterns and influences (e.g., policies, federal and state legislation, national and global economic factors). This ecobehavioral paradigm illustrates how systems influence and are influenced by one another, stressing that contextual systems do not exist in isolation; rather, interactions across systems occur frequently and are multifaceted and multidetermined over time. All system levels influence school–community partnerships, with multiple mesosystemic intersections occurring between the school and various community settings. For example, partnerships may exist between a school and a business within the community or between the school and a community mental health agency. These intersections between the school and various community settings involve multiple individuals, are influenced by multiple factors, and represent opportunities for both educational and noneducational partners to intervene with regard to multiple domains. Some of these domains are discussed next.