Exercise 3
Pick three important settings in your mesosystem. Describe the
links between each pair of settings. How do the relationships in
Hypotheses 28, 34, 35, 36, 38, and 40 apply to these settings in your
mesosystem? Convince us you understand each hypothesis.
This exercise has several parts, each
of which should be addressed separately and specifically.
First, identify three settings. Review the definition of setting,
and of mesosystem. Each must be an identifiable physical place
that you, and perhaps other people, participate in.
Second, pair them up: A & B, B & C, C & A.
Third, describe the links between the two settings in each pair.
Links are people who participate in both settings. You are the
defining primary link. Who else goes in each of the two? Is
anyone else in all three settings? These people would be
supplementary links. Are these people supportive links, as
Bronfenbrenner defines supportive?
Fourth, describe other ways each pair of settings is connected.
Is there communication between them? Intersetting
knowledge? Indirect links through a second-order network?
Fifth, consider each hypothesis separately. How does it apply to
these three settings? Remember that links are people, and that
the issue is whether the people who are links between the settings are
supportive of your participation in the settings are not. These
hypotheses all refer to the relationships between settings, not just
what happens within each setting.
Most common misunderstandings from
Exercise 3:
1- identifying settings as people or activities (e.g. friends, hockey
team, attending college, etc.)
Settings are definable places. Friends, the hockey team,
practices, etc. may participate in the microsystems in the settings,
but they are not the settings.
2- describing links between setting as physical links [sidewalks,
telephone signals] or common themes, and not describing the primary,
supplemental, or indirect links
3- hyp. 28: did not address the compatibility of role demands
4- hyp. 34: some students applied the hypothesis to the Developing
person, rather than to the LINKING person
5- hyp. 38: misunderstanding indirect links:
Settings are indirectly linked by another person, by communication, or
by knowledge.
6- several students did not identify/label each hypothesis. If
you don’t identify it, we can’t tell if you understand it.
General considerations.
Many of the examples provided were good descriptions of developmentally
facilitating microsystems,
the microsystem in each setting, but the examples did not address
whether the mesosystem
was developmentally facilitating. Remember that microsystems,
relations, activities, and mesosystems can all be developmentally
facilitating--but each is defined specifically. A
developmentally facilitating relationship can exist in a microsystem
that is not generally good for development. And a microsystem can
be good for development without implying that the mesosystem is good
for development.
Bottom line: If
a question or hypothesis is about the mesosystem, it's about how the
settings are connected or linked to each other.