Du Boisian Contributions to the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory

Abstract

W. E. B. Du Bois’s insights on racial embodiment maintain relevance in examining identity development for Black youth in the twenty-first century. This chapter provides an interrogation of Du Boisian theories as they contribute to insights on Black life in the racialized social and cultural milieu of the United States. First, Margaret Beale Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) is explicated as a generative theory that renders an identity-focused, culture-sensitive and ecological framework for understanding Black youth development. This chapter then illustrates the utility of applying Du Boisian theory and PVEST to interrogate social scientific theorizing about Black families, as well as the challenges and opportunities created by important sociohistorical moments, for example, Reconstruction, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Great Recession. The chapter concludes by considering implications for adolescent development of diverse youth.

Inclusive and Ameliorative Theorizing for Redressing 21st-Century Structural Inequities

“…Professional research traditions and policy perspectives that persistently undermine social and educational equity opportunities can be explored as sources of risk or the denial of assets that increase the level of human vulnerability for some while decreasing vulnerability for others (e.g., by ignoring the myriad sources of social privileges; Hall et al, 2022; Spencer, 2022); the shortcomings compromise the character of learning and development science by reinforcing stereotypes (i.e., vulnerability status is ignored as a human condition). Instead, viewed synonymously with risk, from an ecological perspective, the penchant to ignore privilege for some and to forefront assessments of risk for others then contributes as stereotypes, thus—itself—adds to high vulnerability as another source of risk and everyday stress.…”

Understanding the complexity of individual developmental pathways: A primer on metaphors, models, and methods to study resilience in development

“…To the developmental psychologist this complex systems perspective may appear as old ideas parading as new ones: Many of the metaphors and models inspired by complexity science were introduced several decades ago to describe developmental processes as self-organizing, interaction dominant and multicausal (e.g., Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994;Lewis, 1995), for example, in the context of the dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action (Thelen & Smith, 1994;van Geert, 1991), Ecological Systems Theory (EST; Bronfenbrenner, 1992) and its successors, such as the Phenomenological version of EST (Hall et al, 2022;Spencer et al, 1997). These and other developmental scientists have consistently emphasized the importance of taking the dynamical, multifactorial, and idiosyncratic nature of (the development of) human behavior into account and phenomena such as person-environment interactions, resilience, and feedback loops, are now more generally considered powerful explanatory vehicles in theories of human behavior and cognition (Heino et al, 2021;Masten et al, 2021;van Geert, 2019).…”