of influences on individuals, rather than research on individual factors undertaken in silos (Patton et al., 2013). There is also the opportunity for ecological perspectives to be used as a tool for integrating and adding an interpretive frame to a body of empirical research in a field. This can be seen in several papers about bullying, where ecological perspectives were applied to understand findings from existing literature in order to make a theoretical argument (see Hong & Espelage, 2012; Hong et al., 2014a, 2014b).
In addition to research implications, there are implications for professional practice arising from ecological perspectives. When working with children and young people, ecological perspectives can inform the way we conceptualize their social experiences, and design interventions to support identified social difficulties or problems. An example of this is through case formulation, which is a technique used to making sense of the problems people are experiencing and the reasons for these (Johnstone & Dallos, 2014). Case formulation is a fundamental skill for practicing psychologists, and the processes and skills involved in doing this effectively form a central feature of professional training for areas such as clinical and educational psychology.
Although various approaches to formulation place differing emphasis on the role of context and degree of attention on wider influences (Johnstone & Dallos, 2014), the overarching process underpinning formulation takes into account an individual’s relationships and social contexts in seeking to formulate hypotheses for the problems they are experiencing. In this vein, practitioners are encouraged to attend to individual factors, and the system outside the individual that exerts an influence on their life (such as family, school, and work) (Weerasekera, 1993). The individual is seen as being part of a system of complex relations, and in order to understand a particular situation, problem, or presenting issue there is a need to cast the lens wider. Although not explicitly framed as an ecological approach, this attention to systems certainly aligns to ecological thinking.
Similarly, professional guidance for trainee educational psychologists promotes circular causality, whereby the cause of a difficulty should not be seen as within the individual, it is a result of the functioning of the system as a whole (Beaver, 2011). This turns attention away from problem‐focused strategies which position the child as the one with the deficit, who is to blame for their situation and who, therefore, needs to change. Psychologists need to look at the wider systems around the child (such as family, school, and other influences) and identify opportunities for change there (Beaver, 2011). As a result, interventions for social difficulties or problems in social development that children and young people might experience should be suitably designed to accommodate this. Approaches that operate entirely at the individual level are likely to be less effective than those which also involve other key influences in a child’s life. Interventions should, therefore, reflect the person–environment interplay that gave rise to the situation and seek to make change at multiple levels. Multifaceted interventions would be recommended, involving different parts of the ecological system.
In closing, it should be noted that there is a tendency both within the existing research literature on parenting and bullying discussed, and in the practitioner case formulation approaches described in this chapter, to focus more predominantly on the closer ecological settings (such as the micro‐ and mesosystem) and put less emphasis on the more distant influences (in the exo‐, macro‐, and chronosystem) in social development. This is understandable due to these having the most direct and visible effects on the everyday life of children and young people, and arguably presenting more tangible opportunities for direct intervention. From a practical standpoint, it is trickier to research the effect of the outer systems directly, or to influence change within them. However, changes at these levels could potentially have a significant impact on more people, so it would be recommended that there is increased attention on the exo‐, macro‐ and chronological systems in future research, and in the approaches used to address social difficulties.
Conclusion
After introducing the core components of ecological perspectives, we have examined how these can be used to understand social development. Focused examples of parenting and attachment, and bullying were studied to illustrate the application of ecological perspectives to domains of social development. The implications for both research and practice arising from adopting an ecological lens have also been considered. In conclusion, it is argued that there is genuine value in adopting ecological perspectives for social development and we run the risk of neglecting the crucial role of context otherwise. The world is constantly changing, and ecological perspectives can help to make sense of both the similarities and differences that we see between people and understand the way that individual and social circumstances influence who people are, who they become, and the complex processes involved. They also provide a framework for interpreting difficulties in social development that can be used in professional practice with children and young people.
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