Naturalistic research and ecological thinking in the study of child development

Different kinds of ideas that are labeled "ecological" have become popular among child psychologists in the recent years. The increasingly spreading use of the term "ecological" in contemporary psychology entails the hazard of inflating the usefulness of that concept by extending its meaning to wide domains of research and thinking without a careful scrutiny of the theoretical implications of the term. An example of such widening of the meaning of "ecological" in psychology is the case where the term is often used as a synonym for "naturalistic" and attached to any empirical study that takes place in some everyday life context. This article is aimed at defining the "ecological approach" in the context of the study of child-environment relationships. Such use of the term "ecological" fits an open-systems theoretical framework which is in principle different from the closed-systems (nonecological) perspective that has been dominant in traditional child psychology. The relevance of culturally constructed meanings that operate in the child-environment transaction is discussed as an important part of the ecological view of human development. Empirical research which is based on the open systems view of the nature of child development within culturally structured meaningful environments constitutes the core of the "ecological approach" in developmental psychology, irrespective of whether it is carried out in the field or in a laboratory.