Reflection on The Ecology of Human Experience

 Reflection on The Ecology of Human Experience

K. Brook Gentry

In The Ecology of Human Experience, we explored the various ways that the world around our students has direct impacts on them as learners. By first getting an understanding of various learning theories and then applying those theories to specific situations I learned just how relevant one’s environment is to their learning. After learning about different theories of development, we were able to apply them and see how they fit both in our own lives and in the lives of the people we read about. 

One thing we were asked to do is make an analysis of 5 different psychological theories of development. This helped me learn, and structure in my mind, the similarities, and differences that these psychologists observed. One thing that struck me about this unit was our conversation about bias amongst these scientists. Piaget himself only studied rich kids in Paris, not a thorough cross-section of even those in his own city. Piaget studied cognition, Brenner focuses on the environment, Skinner was into conditioning based in the microsystem, Vygotsky had his theory of experiential development, Bowlby studied attachment, and we as a class took things from all these theories and added them to our toolbox. 

The bioecological model is a way that we can organize and then analyze the various levels of influence on ourselves and our students. In this class, we were asked to create, and present, the bioecological model of ourselves. This assignment taught me a lot about who I was and what really had an impact on me growing up. I found the origins of some strongly held beliefs, specifically my love of community, that had a direct line back to the exosystem of my hometown. As someone in education, I feel that we spend so much time analyzing kids that it’s easy to forget the human side of things, and this assignment made me do a lot of self-reflection on how my choice of analytical words affect those who may hear them. 

The readings and discussions surrounding our analysis of Coming of Age Around the World are what stand out most to me about this course. Specifically, when we talked about how the children we read about experience socio-economic status or the interaction between social class and economics. The way that SES affects our daily life in such an engrained way was fascinating. Red-lining was something I knew nothing about, and when we learned about how the government systematically made sure that black people (and other minorities) stayed poor was shocking. The video we watched, which name I am blanking on, that was from MTV and showed a bunch of students from around the country experiencing racism and being blatantly racist, was so sad. These lessons brought to home just what my power as an educator can, and should, be. Reading “Kura” specifically was eye-opening to how indigenous people were/ are treated, and that problems of racism are engrained around the world. It’s a very American thing to think of America as being the center of the world, but it’s not, and these problems are way bigger than us. 

Anti-racism is a phrase I had previously heard thrown around, and this class defined and explained it. In the Detroit Metro, there is a long tunnel that I am very familiar with, that has a bunch of moving carpets. The walls are huge screens that have pretty colors and relaxing sounds but that’s not super relevant. If the end of the carpet is benefitting from racism, then white people have a few options. Some people are proudly racist and will get on that carpet and run to the end. Others are complicit. They stand on the carpet and let it move them along. Posts on social media may tout a mildly progressive outlook on politics, but they are still standing on the carpet, benefiting from racist systems, and will still take them to the end. To be anti-racist is to walk the other direction on the carpet. It is a proactive choice to be anti-racist. Ways that we, as educators, can be anti-racist is to look at and try to figure out why our schools are still so segregated. I was shocked to find out that schools in the north are way more segregated than schools in the south because there was never specific legislation forcing northern schools to desegregate. We can also make sure that our classrooms have diverse instruction. I’m an English major so for me, that means having books from a wide variety of perspectives, and valuing oral tradition just as much as written. 

In The Ecology of Human Experience, I learned how cultural, and environmental factors affect students. I also learned how to take that knowledge, and apply it to a classroom setting. By looking at the theories, and myself, with a critical eye I feel confident in my ability to go forward being a much more culturally responsive person.