Bronfenbrenner in context and in motion

Urie Bronfenbrenner's contributions to the understanding of human development span the multilayered contexts he himself identified. He succeeded in reframing the study of development, from an exclusive focus on the decontextualized individual to viewing developing persons in dynamic transaction with the multiple, nested layers of the (changing) environments in which they are embedded He has been equally influential in moving scholarship in the social sciences beyond the false dichotomy differentiating "basic" from "applied" research, as well as the artificial divides between science and social policy. Urie's greatest contribution is this: He transformed the way all of us - scholars parents, teachers, policy makers - study, conceptualize, write about, and seek to enhance human development. His theories and concepts have been usefully employed by scholars located within and/or working across a wide range of societal, disciplinary, substantive, and age-graded boundaries.