a) Identify the elements of the author’s ecology and categorise them according to

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Model.

The Kampung Boy is a story of a young boy’s life in a tin mining village where the

details of a rural life is well described. The author recounts his childhood from infancy until

the time he leaves foe boarding school in the nearby town.

The elements that can be seen in the author’s ecology are microsystem, mesosystem,

exosystem , macrosystem and chronosystem. All the five elements in the Bronfenbrenner

Ecological System Model is visible in the author’s ecology.

In the early years of infancy of the character Mat in the book, the ecology involved was

microsystem. According to Bronfenbrenner (1977), a microsystem is a complex of relations

between the developing person and environment in an immediate setting containing that person

(e.g. the developing persons home, school etc). Microsystem is defined as the direct

environment a child lives in, including the child's interaction with any immediate relationship

or organisation. The immediate relationship will be family members, peer groups,

neighbourhood and the immediate organisation will be school or day-care.

When Mat started going to school, he was exposed to different environments. In this

case, the ecology is mesosystem. A mesosystem comprises of the interrelations among major

settings containing the developing person at a particular point in his or her life. A mesosystem

according to Bronfenbrenner (1977) is a system of microsystems. Mesosystem is used to

describe the different parts of the microsystem such as home, school, neighbourhood and day-

care working together for the benefit of the child (Oswalt, 2008).

In the book, there was a rare occasion where Mat attends a wedding outside his village

for the first time. This setting is called as exosystem according Bronfenbrenner (1977) .
Exosystem refers to the places and people that the child may not interact with regularly but

plays an important role in the child growth and development. These places and people will be

the parents' workplace, the neighbourhood, extended family members

By the age of ten, the ecological setting had widened where Mat was exposed to more

religious beliefs and also had circumcision performed. This setting is called as macrosystem.

Macrosystem consist of all systems mention above, the cultures, the general beliefs, written

and unwritten principles that governs everyone on society behaviours. These principles can

either be legal, political, economic, religious or educational. This setting is the largest setting

in the elements and has great influence.

The first time Mat joins the Quran reading class is a temporary setting in his life but

still vital. This setting is known as chronosystem. Chronosystem is referred to by

Bronfenbrenner as the "temporal dimension of his model". The environment is ever changing.

This system includes major life transitions, environmental and historical events that occur

during development. Chronosystems include normative and non-normative events

(Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Normative events are times that developing persons and families

anticipate and relate to things such as birth, marriage, school entrance, puberty, graduation

from secondary school, joining the workforce, military service, retirement, episodic illness,

and death in old age. Non-normative events appear unexpectedly and are times for which

families are unprepared; they are sometimes viewed as crisis such as the birth of a child with a

genetic anomalies, divorce, suspension from school, being fired, relocation, winning the

lottery, traumatic injuries, premature death, or chronic illness.

Reference

1. Toward an experimental ecology of human development.

Bronfenbrenner, UrieAmerican Psychologist, Vol 32(7), Jul 1977, 513-531.

2. Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Developmental Psychology, 22, 723-742.

3. Urie Bronfenbrenner and Child Development

Angela Oswalt, MSW Updated: Jan 17th 2008