Background/Context: The implications of complexity theory have become a recurring topic in the literatures of a wide range of scholarly and professional fields including adult education. This paper builds on literature calling attention to the educational need for pedagogically addressing the implications of the intensifying complexity in the…

Psychologists have often observed an underlying pattern or theme in the accounts that individuals give of their lives. To test a humanistic-existential approach to human development, 48 women were interviewed with the Loss and Transcendence (L/T) Life History Form. The L/T Life Theme is expressed in two ways: the expanded version includes the…

To determine what a theory of adult learning should encompass, three topics were considered: current status of adult learning theory, contributions of the developmentalists, and foundation for a total person model of adult learning theory. An overview of activity related to theory building in adult learning during the 1970s showed the emphasis…

Interviews with 18 adults who identified negative outcomes from life experience learning showed that, if experience challenges self-definition, growth-inhibiting responses develop. When the threat to self is reduced, growth may result from negative experiences. (SK)

One of the issues facing educators is the increasing number of nontraditional students appearing in the college classroom. Recent conceptualizations of adult reasoning have suggested that there are qualitative differences in reasoning from young to late adulthood. The objective of this study was to examine cognitive differences rather than…

Used simulation to increase students' empathy toward changes that occur as a concomitant of human aging, in a quasi-experiment of an undergraduate "Introduction to Gerontology" course. Discusses the self-selection method by which student experiments are designed; simulations done; and some of the results. (Author/KS)

Recent discoveries about brain function explain how best practices in adult learning may lead to adult learners' developmental growth.

Differences in preparing teachers' orientations to the profession and their career goals and aspirations were examined as a function of their life stages and ages. Intensive interviews were conducted before and after the student teaching experience. Half of the student teachers were classified as returning students or adult learners. The other…

This paper presents the "uses of the past" model of personality development, a model in which adult development transforms an individual's history into resources for meeting present demands. The components of the model are delineated in terms of how: (1) neither the past nor the present is fixed in its effects or its contribution to present…

A research project examined the relationship between education and work in the professions of social work and engineering. The project encompassed four main studies of professionals at different career stages. There were (1) a questionnaire and interview study of alumni from the Case Western Reserve University Schools of Engineering and Social…

The focus of the conference was on the changing curriculum on continuing education, with special attention to women's education, professional education, and life experience. The following papers from the conference are included in this compilation: "Continuing Education" (Stoddart); "Women's Education and the New Technology" (Gerver); "Women in…

The first of three papers from this symposium on cross-cultural human resource development (HRD), "Determinants of Supply of Technical Training Opportunities for Human Capital Development in Kenya" (Moses Waithanji Ngware, Fredrick Muyia Nafukho) reports findings from interviews of technical training institute department heads in Kenya…

This symposium on adult learning and human resource development consists of three presentations. "Adult Learning Principles and Concepts in the Workplace: Implications for Training in HRD" (Margot B. Weinstein) reports on findings from interviews with restaurant employees who reported that training practices using adult learning…

Adjustment experiences of South Korean graduate students' wives living in Georgia were examined from a feminist viewpoint. The adaptive process, its cultural meaning, and related social ramifications, was hypothesized to be an example of transformative learning. These two questions guided the study: (1) how did South Korean students' wives adapt…