States that teachers must "face" themselves in order to encourage experimentation with practices that evoke embodied experiences. Discusses "facing yourself," the process of knowing who you are, who you are not, and allowing for the self-transformation that should follow. (CMK)

Outward Bound Czech Republic offers a personal development program for international participants that goes beyond the physical outdoor activities traditionally associated with adventure education. Dramaturgy uses "scenarios" in course design, allowing instructors to integrate a range of social, physical, creative, and reflection…

Cluster analyses supported the existence of 2 groups of perfectionists (labeled "adaptive" and "maladaptive") and a group of nonperfectionists in a sample (N = 312) of college students. Maladaptive perfectionists evidenced the poorest adjustment of all 3 groups. Adaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists generally evidenced comparable aspects…

The articles in this issue each contribute uniquely to the growing field of adolescent religious and spiritual development. Together, they also illustrate important themes in the field, including the multidimensionality of the domain of religious and spiritual development and a growing emphasis on themes consistent with developmental systems…

Age differences within the yo-yo trend in IQ, caused when aging norms that produce inflated scores are replaced with new norms, were examined using longitudinal WISC, WISC-R and WISC-III records of students tested for special education services from 10 school districts. Descriptive and individual growth modeling analyses revealed that while the…

Educators of professionals often want to determine the quality of student performance and its impact on those they serve. Performance assessment in the education of teachers, medical practitioners, and counselors, for example, currently receives much discussion and debate in the literature (Vaugh & Everhart, 2004; Howley, 2003; and, Urbani et al.,…

The purpose of this research is to understand the relationship between human development in older adults and personal learning. Personal or self-directed learning (SDL) refers to a style of learning where the individual directs, controls, and evaluates what is learned. It may occur with formal classes, but most often takes place in non-formal…

This research uses the National Child Development Study to investigate the effects of adult learning upon 12 outcomes that act as proxies for health and social capital. To minimise selection bias we consider changes in outcomes rather than levels. We find that adult learning plays an important role in contributing to the small shifts in attitudes…

This article describes the main findings of a study of youth theatre commissioned by the National Association of Youth Theatres (NAYT), funded by Arts Council England (ACE) and carried out by the Centre for Applied Theatre Research (CATR). The study explored the impact of taking part in youth theatre on young people's personal and social…

The rapid growth in the number of older adult learners presents new challenges and opportunities for adult educators. These include facilitating the development of individuals as they make the transition to their later years and of American society as it struggles to reenvision aging.

To meet ordinary pre-school expectations, a child has to have acquired the ability to focus and attend to another person and to engage easily and warmly--exchanging simple, friendly gestures, smiles, head nods, emotional expressions, and meaningful sounds. He or she must be able to communicate, show another person what she wants and take the next…

This article, using a controlled design, reports the results of an exploratory study to investigate the impact of two types of intervention strategies (cognitively vs. emotionally focused) on two types of identity processes (self-construction and self-discovery) in a culturally diverse sample of 90 emerging adult university students. A…

When a behavior disappears and then resurfaces, developmental psychologists typically look more closely at the behavior to figure out what is different before and after--that is, they increase the grain with an eye toward discovering how the system that generates that behavior has changed. But what ought to count as a U-shaped phenomenon? How…

This study explored internship practices in family studies programs in the United States. Specifically, procedures, supervision, purpose, benefits, integration with coursework, and evaluation were examined. Data were collected via a questionnaire e-mailed to universities and colleges with undergraduate family studies programs (N = 68). Although…

The predominant theoretical orientation of the majority of scientists studying human behavioral development and family functioning is derived from systems models. These theories are dynamic in their conceptualization and emphasize process and context. To a large extent, the analytic strategies we employ are not consistent with our theoretical…