RESOLUCIÓN Nº 1382-2006-JNE Expediente Nº 1170-2006

and study human lives, it is also important to understand the ecological influences of interlinked systems on young people’s development. For this reason, an ecological ap- proach is introduced in this section to address how events and particular circumstances shape development. In the past, psychologists emphasized the role of the parents fo- cusing on things such as their behaviour, health condition, educational qualifications, employment, personality and the extent to which they provided development oppor- tunities to their children. Sociologists focused on community influences in addition to parental characteristics. In the sociological view, young people’s development needs to be considered in the context of the environment where they grow up. The Ecological theories of development take into consideration the individual, their family and com- munity factors and how they interact and shape individual development. The origins of the ecological systems theories became popular by Bronfenbrenner [23] (1979), followed by Garbarino [70] (1992) and Steinberg [182] (1990). The key focus of the ecological systems theories is on individual development in context taking into consideration the impact of multiple contexts such as school, peer group and neighbourhood. Human development takes place in a social context and results from the interaction between a changing individual and a changing context (Elder [54], 1998; 1999, Lerner [108], 1984; 1996; Samero↵ [160], 1983, Vondraceck, Lerner and Schulenberg [191], 1986).

Although a number of theories have been developed, the work of Bronfenbrenner [23] (1979) has been definitive in understanding the ecological framework and has inspired research on young people’s development. Bronfenbrenner suggests that young peo-

ple’s development is the result of the interaction between the quality and context of the environment and the young person (see Figure 3.1: ‘Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model’). The context of an individual’s environment is multidimensional extending from the immediate family environment to the wider community and the social and historical context. Developmental processes that interact and link parental character- istics, neighbourhood characteristics, socio-historical conditions and individual ability help explain the directions that young people follow in life. Developmental processes act in the proximal and the distal environment experienced by the individual. The proximal environment is the basic context for development and refers for example to the family environment which o↵ers daily contact and experiences. The influence of the proximal environment varies in relation to the individual and to the environment both immediate and remote. Distal cultural and social values have an indirect e↵ect on the individual and are often mediated by the proximal environment.

Bronfenbrenner’s model involves five interrelated systems which are:

(1) The Microsystem refers to activities, interactions and interpersonal relations in the individual’s immediate setting. This setting contains other individuals with di↵erent personality characteristics and systems of beliefs. Examples of such settings include parents, school, friends and neighbourhood. The Microsystem is the system in which the individual encounters the most social relations and the most direct ones. The relationships in the microsystem are bi-directional, for example the young person has an influence on the parents and at the same time the parents have an influence on the young person. The role of the individual is not constrained in observing these relationships; instead the individual has an active role in constructing the experiences in these settings.

(2) The Mesosystem refers to the interactions between the microsystems. It pro- vides a connection to the structures of the microsystem, such as for example the connection between the child’s teachers and parents or social services and the neighbourhood. The Mesosystem is not as proximal as the Microsystem since unlike parents, teachers are concerned with a number of individuals simultane- ously. In addition, a child’s education does not depend only on their teachers but also on parental assistance on learning.

(3) The Exosystem is the setting that links the context where the individual does not have any active role and the context where the individual is actively partici- pating. An example of an exosystem would be a husband losing their job and the direct impact of unemployment on the family’s financial situation which could a↵ect their daily lives and increase stress in the home.

(4) The Macrosystem encompasses a variety of influences such as the cultural val- ues, customs, resources or the broader context in which an individual lives. The macrosystem has a cascading influence on all other systems; the exosystem, the

macrosystem and the microsystem. Examples of the Macrosystem include eth- nicity, race, poverty and broader contexts such as developing and industrialized countries. The culture or the ideology of the Macrosystem could influence the young person directly but the young person is not in a position to influence his/her surrounding Macrosystem.

(5) The Chronosystem encompasses the dimension of time in a young person’s de- velopment. It refers to cumulative experiences of the individual, environmental events and socio-historical circumstances. It includes transitions and shifts in one’s lifespan and also the socio-historical context that may influence a person. The Chronosystem includes life changes such as for example starting school, get- ting married, starting a job, having children, moving house, getting divorced, or retiring. An example of socio-historical circumstances would include a financial crisis and its e↵ects on the daily life of a family.

The central point in the ecological systems theory is the role of the individual in a social context. The theory encourages the investigation of how the environment, from the most distal to the closest, influences the individual and provides a basis to consider how the neighbourhood, family, school and peer group characteristics interact and influence educational and vocational development. Bronfenbrenner stressed that the determinant of individual development is the environment as it is perceived rather than as it may exist in reality. What is original in Bronfenbrenner’s theory is the set of nested structures, each inside the next. In some of these settings the young person could make an impact (microsystems; eg the classroom), others describe the interactions of the settings the young person occupies (mesosystems; eg parents and school), others reflect key figures in their lives (exosystems; eg parental workplace), others are influenced by the young person’s culture (macrosystems; eg race and ethnicity), and finally others reflect socio-historical circumstances (chronosystems; eg weak labour market, financial crisis). A key strength of the ecological systems theory is that it considers all the

settings of a child’s life and the dynamic interactions between them. However, a critique of the theory is that it does not describe the pathways and processes through which the di↵erent settings of a young persons life have an impact on development and how the individual interacts with the settings in which they live.

The ecological systems theory has been employed in various disciplines and numerous research areas some of which involve youth transitions into adulthood (Mitchell [130], 2000), Families, delinquency and crime (Sampson and Laub [163], 2005), Young adults’ transitions in the Netherlands (Liefbroer and De Jong [112], 1995) to name a few. The theory has also been employed in neighbourhood e↵ects research (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn [110], 2000).

The ecological theory can suggest ways in which living in a deprived neighbourhood influences a young person’s development. The neighbourhood where a young person lives can be the microsystem setting which influences directly their activities, social relations and interactions in the immediate setting. The young person experiences the interaction between the settings that surround them in the Mesosystem such as for example parental relations with their school which could influence participation and motivation to school. There is a bidirectional role since the young person does not only experience a set of activities, roles and responsibilities with other individuals in their neighbourhood, but at the same time influences events that occur in their neighbourhood.

This section reviewed theories of human development that will be employed to inform the theoretical framework of the current thesis.These theories consider the interaction between the quality and context of the environment and the individual in a compre- hensive way, and also can help explain how the context from the immediate family environment to the community and the historical conditions can influence young peo- ple’s trajectories. While these frameworks provide a basis to understand individual development, understanding neighbourhood context e↵ects on young people’s trajecto-

ries requires a thorough investigation of the literature on the e↵ect of neighbourhood context on individuals. The next section presents the key sociological approaches that have been developed to explain the consequences of deprived areas on young people.