Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917, Moscow[1] – September 25, 2005) was a Russian-born American psychologist best known for using a contextual framework to better understand human development.
[10] His father worked as a neuropathologist at a hospital for the developmentally disabled called Letchworth Village, located in Rockland County, N.Y. Bronfenbrenner received a bachelor's in psychology and music from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1938.
[8] Bronfenbrenner wrote over 300 research papers and 14 books,[11] and achieved the title of Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development at Cornell University.
His theory states that there are many different levels of environmental influences that can affect a child's development, starting from people and institutions immediately surrounding the individual to nationwide cultural forces.
[17] In 1964 Bronfenbrenner testified before a congressional hearing about an antipoverty bill, stating that measures should be directed towards children in order to reduce the effects of poverty on developing persons.
[11] Furthermore, he was invited to a federal panel that was tasked with developing a method to counteract the effects of child poverty and to get them on an equal educational footing with wealthier students.
[11] Bronfenbrenner's input may have helped Head Start develop some of its environmental intervention methods, such as family support services, home visits, and education for parenthood.
"[11] His theory also helped to push developmental research into conducting observations and experiments to discern the impact of certain environmental variables on human development.