Proximal Processes in School Readiness

Abstract

In 1979, The ecology of human development was first published (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Historically, the state of theory in human development was reasonably, if somewhat arbitrarily, divided into those positions that placed development as a largely within-person process and those that placed the mechanisms of development largely outside of the individual. The nature-nurture debate was raging, and it was expedient to assign models of development into one camp or the other, even when there were some that blurred the lines. For example, the work of Vygostky, who had long since died, was just becoming known to American and European developmentalists. Even in its initial state (and more so as it evolved into its current state), the ecological model of human development was a transactional model, one that considered development to be due to both internal and external forces, and in the process continued to transform the debate between nature-nurture into a question of how these two forces interact (see, e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), rather than which is dominant, as Anne Anastasi had done nearly 20 years before (Anastasi, 1958).