The ecological development approach and the ethological approach compare and contrast in various ways. The ethological approach states that environmental influences have different effects on individuals at different times. This means that a person will feel most sensitive to particular stimuli in the environment at some point as opposed to other times in life. Some of the ethological theorists include Conrad Lorenz and John Bowlby. The ecological approach, on the other hand, divides a person's environment into five different levels or systems. Ecological theorists insist that a person’s development is influenced by everything in his or her surrounding environment. Urie Bronfenbrenner is a renowned ecological theorist who came up with the five levels of a person’s environment. This essay will explain, describe and contrast the ecological development approach and the ethological approach.
Conrad Lorenz, one of the ethological theorists observed and believed that development of an individual was practically biological he insisted that processes such as imprinting needed to take place earlier in life failure to which they would never take place. Another ethological theorist, John Bowlby, came with a theory known as the attachment theory. It is believed that attachment, a process in an individual, in the first year of life, has significant and critical consequences. Most behaviors acquired during the early stages of life become solid and form part of an individual. The environment, in which an individual finds himself or herself in, in the early stages of life, plays a huge role in his development and behavior. The ethological theorists emphasize that an individual's responsiveness to the environment varies across the life span. The environment plays a huge role in the development of each person (Bateson, 2015).
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Ecological development approach explains the development of an individual (or a child) in a more complex yet simpler way. The ecological system theory created by Urie, explains that a person's development is influenced by everything in their surrounding environment. According to the theory, a person's environment is divided into five different levels namely, the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macro-system and the chronosystem. The microsystem represents the things in the environment which are closest to an individual such as home or school. The reaction to the people at school, for example, affects how one is treated back.
The mesosystem is made up of different parts of a person's microsystems and their interactions. The interaction between a child's teacher and parent forms a mesosystem and affects his development. The exosystem is a level of the environment which does not involve an individual as an active participant. The person is still affected by the exosystem. For instance, a child's development would be affected when his parent receives a promotion at work or when his parent loses a job. The macro-system consists of the cultural environment where a person lives and all the other systems which affect this person. Examples of macro-systems include the country's economy, political systems and cultural values. A child growing in a third world country has different development effects from another who lives in the United States for example (Hill, et al. 2014).
The ethological approach and the ecological developmental approach both try to explain the effects of the environment of an individual. Both theories tend to emphasize that the development of a person is mostly affected by the environment at an earlier age. The ethological theorists insist that most developmental processes must take place at an earlier age. They believed that most of the behaviors acquired earlier in life, as a result of the immediate environment at that time, played a significant role in the development and behavior of an individual. Ecological development approach explains development to be affected by a person's environment in various ways. The different levels of a person's environment affect his or her development.
References
Bateson, P. (2015). Ethology and human development. A Handbook of child psychology and developmental science . John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hill, S. E., Delpriore, D. J., Rodeheffer, C. D., & Butterfield, M. E. (2014). The effect of ecological harshness on perceptions of the ideal female body size: an experimental life history approach. Evolution and Human Behavior , 35 (2), 148-154.
