The Brofenbrenner model

 How can this model be used to understand the relationship between a student’s family life and their experience in school.  

The model that is explained in Guy-Evans article Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system gives us a lot on how the students at home life affects their experience at school and especially their performance. Bronfenbrenner breaks these environments that these children live into 5 groups, micro, meso, exo, macro and chronosystem. These 5 levels cover the broadness of the environment with the microsystem being the smallest most precise group which covers personal relationships such as parents and teachers. The chronosystem covers all the events of a person’s lifetime and the changes that occur during it.

This model can be used to understand the relationship between a student’s family life and their school experience by showing all the changes that occur outside of school which influence how the child should act. Lots of the students’ actions can be directly ascertained to a certain aspect of their family life which influenced them to act a certain way as a direct effect of their at home life. We as educators can use this model to help better understand why students act the certain way they do. However each student’s experience is unique and they all bring different influences and experiences into the classroom. To better understand how these influences affected the students we can look at the model. For example if a child is having a bad day and is mad in the classroom, we can look at the model and see what factors might have caused the student to be mad. We can look at one of the systems such as a microsystem. There can be a direct cause and effect within the microsystem which caused the child to have a bad day or maybe a collection of things such as how the microsystem at home and the microsystem at school went causing the student to act this way.

Specifically with family life, family affects your entire life experience on all systems. By looking at the model we can pinpoint the influences that either go on day to day causing differing moods each day to the more broader terms such as the values that their parents passed down to them which can be applied in for example, the chronosystem which spans across your entire life experience.

The Brofenbrenner model is an essential tool to help understand the connections between influences and the reactions/beliefs that we hold as a person. By better pinpointing these causes we are better able to curate our own styles of teaching or in general handle certain situations in life.