It is in these settings where the child directly interacts with social agents – the family, peers, teachers, and neighbourhood. The mesosystem consists of relations between these contexts. For instance, how a child’s parents relate to the teachers, or how the parents view the adolescent’s friends, are Fig. .
: Bronfenbrenner’s Contextual View of Development Exosystem Mesosystem Microsystem The Individual Chronosystem Family School Peers Work Place Mass Media Neighbour Friends Neighbourhood Religious settings Time Macrosystem A tt it u d e s d eo l o gi es B e li ef s r a d it io n s I T experiences likely to influence an individual’s relationships with others. The exosystem includes events in social settings where the child does not participate directly, but they influence the childs’ experiences in the immediate context. For example, the transfer of father or mother may cause tension among the parents which might affect their interactions with the child or the general amenities available to the child like quality of schooling, libraries, medical care, means of entertainment, etc. Macrosystem includes the culture in which the individual lives.
You have read in Chapter about the importance of culture in the development of an individual. Chronosystem involves events in the individual’s life course, and socio-historical circumstances of the time such as, divorce of parents or parents’ economic setback, and their effect on the child. In a nutshell, Bronfenbrenner’s view is that a child’s development is significantly affected by the complex world that envelops her/him – whether it be the minutiae of the conversations s/he has with her/his playmates, or the social and economic life- circumstances into which s/he is born. Research has shown that children in impoverished environments have unstimulating environment devoid of books, magazines, toys, etc., lack experiences such as visits to library, museum, zoo, etc., have parents who are ineffective as role models, and live in overcrowded and noisy surroundings.
As a result of these conditions children are at a disadvantage and have difficulties in learning. Durganand Sinha ( ) has presented an ecological model for understanding the development of children in