“M(ai)cro: Centering the Macrosystem in Human Development”
By L. Onnie Rogers et al. (Human Development, 2021; 65, 270-292)
As a developmental scientist, I have struggled with how to conduct research that provides meaningful learning for educators without erasing the larger structural forces that shape youths’ experiences. For example, when working with schools and youth programs, how can we examine factors that foster student engagement and motivation without understanding the ways educational settings were designed to privilege and promote some cultural ways of being while erasing others? Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model has guided my research over the years, yet I have struggled to figure out how to integrate the individual and interpersonal with the structural in practice. L. Onnie Rogers and her colleagues provide the blueprint I have been looking for in their 2021 Human Development article “M(ai)cro: Centering the Macrosystem in Human Development.”
Ecological models of development start from the premise that individuals develop within contexts ranging from the micro (e.g., homes, schools, neighborhoods) to the macro (e.g., laws, policies, media). Developmental researchers have come a long way in acknowledging the influence of macro contexts on human development, but we still center the micro in our research. Rogers and her colleagues offer a new term, m(ai)cro, to “intentionally thread macro and micro in how we define and describe processes of human development. Although macro and micro represent different levels of the ecosystem, they are indeed joint processes” (p. 287).
While this might seem too abstract to have meaningful implications for classrooms, I believe that the idea of the m(ai)cro has relevance for educators, especially in today’s fraught political climate. Rogers and her colleagues do a masterful job at pointing out the ways our lives are inextricable from not only our local contexts, but also the historical and cultural structures in which we are embedded. Education must not ignore those structures when making decisions about how to address inequities in the system, the way we engage individual students in school, and what we teach in the classrooms. Infusing the m(ai)cro lens into how we think about our work with students is a crucial step in educational equity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nancy L. Deutsch
Nancy L. Deutsch is the Linda K. Bunker Professor of Education and Director of Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, Charlottesville.
