Urie Bronfenbrenner
Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917 – September 25, 2005) was a Russian-born American psychologist best known for using a contextual framework to better understand human development. This framework, broadly referred to as 'ecological systems theory', was formalized in an article published in American Psychologist, articulated in a series of propositions and hypotheses in his most cited book, The Ecology of Human Development and further developed in The Bioecological Model of Human Development and later writings. He argued that natural experiments and applied developmental interventions provide valuable scientific opportunities. These beliefs were exemplified in his involvement in developing the US Head Start program in 1965. Bronfenbrenner's writings about the limitations of understanding child development solely from experimental laboratory research and the potential for using contextual variability to provide insight into developmental processes was important in changing the focus of developmental psychology. Biography Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow on April 29, 1917, to Russian Jewish parents, the pathologist Alexander Bronfenbrenner and Eugenie Kamenetski. When he was six, his family moved to the United States, first to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then a year later to rural New York State. His father worked as a neuropathologist at a hospital for the developmentally disabled called Letchworth Village, located in Rockland County, N.Y. Bronfenbrenner received a bachelor's in psychology and music from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1938. He earned a master's in education from Harvard in 1940, and a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1942. He entered the U.S. military the day after receiving his doctorate, going on to serve as a psychologist in various military bodies during World War II. After the war, he briefly worked as an assistant chief clinical psychologist for the newly founded VA Clinical Psychology Training Program in Washington, D.C. After working as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan for two years he moved to Cornell University in 1948 as an assistant professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations (now Department of Human Development). The Department of Family Relations and Human Development was located in College of Home Economics, one of the state supported, land grant colleges within Cornell University. As a land grant college, it had a strong applied mission and included a nursery school. It was also an interdisciplinary department, including sociologists and historians as well as psychologists. At Cornell, his research focused on child development and the impact of social forces in this development for the rest of his career. He was appointed to a federal panel about development in impoverished children around 1964 and 1965, with this panel helping in the creation of Head Start in 1965. Bronfenbrenner wrote over 300 research papers and 14 books, and achieved the title of Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development at Cornell University. He was married to Liese Price and had six children. Death He died at his home in Ithaca, New York, on September 25, 2005, at the age of 88, due to complications