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18.4: What are Contextual meta-theories?

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    9368
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    Contextual meta-theories can be understood as having as their root metaphor the tennis game. In these meta-theories, the target unit of analysis is the game-- the back and forth between the person and his or her context, both of which are assumed to be proactive and acting on their own agendas. Both of them are also assumed to be in motion, so contextualist theorists often describe their task as understanding “developing people in a changing world.” Sometimes the exchange between person and context is captured in other dyadic metaphors—such as the conversation or the dance. All of these metaphors have in common the central notion that you cannot make sense of the conversation (tennis game, dance) by looking at only one of the partners. Because it is co-constructed through their joint activity, development takes its form and directionality from the interaction between the person and context, and can be continuous or discontinuous depending on how the game is played.

    Within the contextualist meta-model, as summarized in Table 7.1, the person is seen as an agentic, reflective, self-regulating, socially connected being interacting with a context that is itself active, structured, and dynamic. These partners mutually operate on and are operated on by each other in service of competence and cultural membership. The hypothesized underlying causes of development in these meta-theories are the joint activity of both person and environment leading to the transformation of both. Some of the better known members of the contextualist family include Bronfennbrenner’s bio-ecological model and the lifespan approach. The “contextualist” moniker reflects these perspectives’ concern with development as unfolding within and shaped by multi-level ecological or contextual forces, such as microsystem settings, society, and historical contexts.