ABSTRACT
In the earlier parts of this book, I have discussed what may be going on inside the child, and what experiences in microsystems, between the child and one or a few others, may do to the child's development as a social person. The scale of the events I have reviewed is small, mainly a matter of everyday experiences between a very few people, over and over and over again in a limited range of settings. I am con®dent that these everyday settings and proximal processes are enormously interesting and important. But even the smallest settings are embedded in larger systems: and as children grow older they have increasingly to take part in activities where they are part of large social groups. There are more people to interact with, more impersonal rules, more public roles, more issues about reputation, different amounts of choice, of control, of opportunity, of achievement. I move now to what we know about how children's participation in largescale social settings in¯uences their development. I begin with the experience of the child in the microsystems that they participate in within large social institutions. The ®rst focus of this section is the child in school, but I go on to discuss the importance of childcare arrangements, children's engagement with the media, and participation in religious belief and practice. I also address some issues about cultural factors in the development of the social person, and some research on the role of mesosystems and exosystems in development.
