Understanding the identities of mixed-race college students through a developmental ecology lens; Kristen A. Renn

Pg 383 – “The identity development of mixed-race college students, those students whose parents are form more than one federally designated racial or ethnic category, does not appear to follow the path outlined in traditional models of racial identity development (e.g., Atkinson, Morten, & Sue, 1979; Atkinson & Sue, 1993; Cross, 1987, 1995; Helms, 1990, 1995).”

~ No one model fits everyone, that’s the flaw of most if not all identity theory models.

Pg 385 – “In the first phase of an ongoing study of mixed-race college students, I, too, found that students identified in four patterns similar to those found by Root (1996) and Wallace (2001), but that a significant number of them also identified in a fifth pattern, choosing to opt out of racial identity categories altogether by deconstructing them.”

~ Can you really opt out? I mean you can deconstruct them and not self-identify, but others will still identify you, regardless of you self-identifying or not.

Pg 387 – “Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1993) attempted in his model to account for the influences of individuals (person), their interactions with the environment and the responses they provoke form the environment (process), their interactions within immediate settings (context), and changing sociocultural influences on development (time). The elements of person, process, context, and time (PPCT) create a developmental environment unique to an individual, though organizations such as college and universities provide shared settings where the unique developmental environments of hundreds or thousands of students overlap significantly and are influenced by institutional policy and programs.”

~ For me the person = self; process = personal history; context = working self-concept; and time = development.

Pg 387 – “The Person component of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1993) ecology model can be considered to be the personal experiences and characteristics that students bring with them to higher education, including socially constructed identities (race, ethnicity, gender, abilities and disabilities, etc.), prior academic performance and academic self-concept, political and social ideologies, and family background (Renn & Arnold, in press).”

~ So this is basically my idea of the complete self.

Pg 387 – “Bronfenbrenner’s (1979. 1993) ecology model places the individual squarely at the center, with ever-more-distal developmental influences arrayed around him or her in a series of nested contexts called microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems. The four levels of environmental analysis are useful in examining the processes and contexts of identity development. From each of the four levels, the individual receives (388) messages about identity, developmental forces and challenges, and resources or supports for addressing those challenges. The systems themselves interact in important ways, as well, to create congruent, non-conflicting settings; incongruent, conflict-free settings; or sometimes in between.”

~ So maybe there’s more than just one form of environment that can influence you. There’s close friends and family, general acquaintances, and random encounters, and non-social environment.

Pg 388 – Diagram of ecology model.

~ Interesting picture, it’s like the cross-section of a tree with little bubbles in it.

Pg 388 – “Microsystems are the face-to-face settings containing the individual.”

~ Social interactions = microsystems.

Pg 388 – “Microsystems for college students may include classrooms, laboratories, athletic teams, living situations, friendship groups, student organizations, on- or off-campus jobs, families of origin, partners or spouses, and possibly children.”

~ Again, all social interactions.

Pg 388 – “Mesosystems occur when two or more microsystems interact, and “special attention is focused on the synergistic effects created by the interaction of developmentally instigative or inhibitory features and process-(389)es present in each setting” (Bronfenbrenner, 1993, p. 22)

~So large social interactions where multiple roles conflict = mesosystems.

Pg 389 – “Students are embedded in interacting mesosytems of academic, social, and work life, and the mesosystems provide a variety of forces and resources that affect identity development.”

~ Mesosystems affect identity development because they cause conflict, which inevitably causes development.

Pg 389 – “Bronfenbrenner model (1979. 1993) holds that for development to occur, the individual must engage in increasingly complex actions and tasks. Both highly congruent and incongruent environments can provide settings for this increasing complexity, assuming that necessary forces and resources are present.”

~ So you cannot develop doing the same thing over and over again because it’s not bringing anything new into the mix, minus more time. Maybe time is also a complex task?

Pg 389 – “Exosystems exist when the individual’s developmental possibilities are influenced by a setting that does not contain her.”

~ So this would be outsider-influence. Things that a person cannot control.

Pg 389 – “Exosystem factors are largely unaccounted for in student development and college impact research, except as they affect a measurable variable attached to students (e.g., academic major, financial aid awarded, parents’ income).

~ Again, outsider forces.

Pg 389 – “Bronfenbrenner’s ecology model (1979, 1993) shines a light on these processes and asks what development influence they have on the student.”

~ The point of his model.

Pg 389 – “Macrosystems, the most distal levels of environmental influence, are also largely missing from traditional student development research. The macrosystem entails the

overarching patterns of micro-, meso- and exosystem characteristics of a given culture, subculture, or other extended social structure, with particular reference to the developmentally instigative belief systems, resources, hazards, lifestyles, opportunity structures, life course options, and patters of interchange that are embedded in such (390) overarching systems. (Bronfenbrenner, 1993, p. 25)
The macrosystem defines and is defined by patterns of developmental possibilities held in the face-to-face and second-degree influences of the micro-, meso, and exosystems, as well as the interactions between and among those systems. The macrosystem is dependent on time, place, and culture.”

~ So macrosystems are really the intangibles, like culture that affect a person, that they are connected to but have no direct influence over, and that is still an integral piece of them.

Pg 390 – “In various iterations of his model, Bronfenbrenner included or omitted time as an essential component.”

~ I think time is a huge part of development. The more time you have to self-reflect the more you can change.

Pg 390 – “Later he added the chronosystem as an element of the ecology model
The individual’s own developmental life course is seen as embedded in and powerfully shaped by conditions and events occurring during the historical period through which the person lives.
A major factor influencing the course and outcome of human development is the timing of biological and social transitions as they relate to the culturally defined age, role expectations, and opportunities occurring throughout the life course (1995, p. 641).
The chronosystem thus operates at a sociohistorical level to make possible certain kinds of developmentally instigative opportunities (e.g., legal desegregation of public institutions or the admission of women to military academies), as well as at an individual level according to the timing of life events in the microsystems (e.g., a divorce, move, or sibling birth).”

~ So the chronosystem is almost like measuring personal history and cultural history and making it have meaning in the greater identity of the individual or culture.

Pg 393 – “The face-to-face interactions in on-campus microsystems contained the “proximal processes” of student development, and sharply influenced students’ sense of where they fit in and how easily the could move from one identity-based space to another.”

~ So the closer something is to a person the more influential it is in determining the development of the person.

Pg 394 – “The competing or complementary message students received about racial identity across the mesosystem influenced both the degree of permeability of group boundaries and the desirability of identifying with various groups within the campus environment. In some cases, students were aware of the interactions within the mesosystem and the contribution to identity development…”

~ The more one understand’s the groups closest to one’s self, the more one can go in-between and understand going in-between groups.

Pg 395 – “Exosystem influences played a role in students’ awareness of racial identity. With few exceptions, students described the experience of having to “check one box only” on institutional forms, state, and federal forms designed and distributed by administrators outside of students’ immediate settings.”

~ Things beyond your control still affect your emotional status, which, in turn, affects other things.

Pg 396 – “The influence of the macrosystem on mixed-race identity is not as concretely described as are the micro-, meso-, or exosystem influences, but it was present in the developmental ecology of participants. Bronfenbrenner (1993) defined the macrosystem as consisting of “developmentally instigative belief systems, resources, hazards, lifestyles, opportunity structures, life course options and patterns of social interchange” (p. 25).”

~ This is almost just like everything else lumped in together.

Pg 400 – “Peer cultures with the greatest permeability of microsystem boundaries supported the greatest diversity of mixed-race student identities. The ability to move freely between and among academic and social microsystems enhanced students’ degree of exploration of multiple identity patterns, including the option not to identify along racial lines. Although the efficacy of attempts to alter student peer cultures is limited (see, for example, Dalton & Petrie, 1997), educators can take steps to enhance students’ ability to move between microsystems.”

~ The more people can change and understand changing their groups the more they understand other groups.