This article describes an innovative program that assists individuals with their personal development and teaches them to craft lives of meaning and purpose. Framed around developmental, relational-cultural and life span transitional theories, the program explores themes such as identity, security, relationships, beliefs/values and dreams/visions…

This manuscript addresses adoption and the related gifts and challenges faced by adoptees. Challenges such as the search for identity, reconciliation, and identifying how they belong are also discussed. This manuscript also addresses common myths and misconceptions about the adoption experience. A creative intervention, using super heroes and…

Molding intellectuals is one of the expectations people have, which comes from a deep-rooted belief in education. The humanity hypothesis of this belief is to take knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge as the only prescription for human beings. This hypothesis overturns the relation of knowledge and life. Intellectuals make scientific paradigm as…

Adventurous activities are growing in popularity as a form of leisure and recreation, yet many non-participants find it difficult to understand what motivates people to seek out situations in which there is an element of danger and risk. This research examines the meanings of long-term participation in outdoor adventure for women working in…

In the United States, the concept of youth-adult partnership remains innovative. The notion that youth and adults can collaborate on issues of importance runs counter to prevailing societal norms, public policies, structures and standards of practice. There is not much cultural or policy support for managers seeking to integrate youth-adult…

The current study focuses on data collected from children in the United States shortly after the Yugoslavia-NATO conflict. Fifty-six children in two Midwestern states were asked to draw a picture of peace and a picture of war. Two major themes, peace as interpersonal interactions and peace as negative peace, emerged from the qualitative analysis…

Although thermal conditions influence the development of living organisms in a wide variety of ways, this topic has been recently ignored in humans. This paper reintroduces thermal conditions as a topic of importance for developmentalists by presenting an example of how thermal conditions are hypothesized to influence a particular developmental…

Since their founding in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have represented the intellectual incubators, nurturing social-cultural environments, and professional launching pads of numerous black leaders, such as noted black theologian and revered Morehouse man, Howard Washington…

After war and armed conflicts, the child victims of these events need protection and reintegration. In reality, the physical and psychic consequences of wars on children persist for some time after the war. In this regard, we must prepare the reintegration of these children into society. To reintegrate these children, we must think of both a…

The competing global forces of homogenizing commercialism and absolutist sectarianism continue to engender a regime of fear and have all but eclipsed what John Dewey called the democratic "habit of amicable cooperation." The values of cooperation are increasingly seen as "unrealistic" and even taken as signs of weakness in the…

This piece recounts personal changes I underwent while collecting data for my dissertation. Stemming from my own personal experiences of anomie and feelings of not belonging to the languages and cultures of either Canada or Israel, this inquiry examined the collusion of my attitudes with the attitudes of advanced Hebrew learners of diverse…

More attention should be paid to four issues during the massification of Chinese higher education: (1) how to understand the prime cause of the expansion of higher education; (2) how to reinforce liberal education; (3) how to balance the relationship between equality and excellence; and (4) how to harmonize the relationship between the university,…

This study evaluated effects of the "Iowa Strengthening Families Program," a family-focused universal preventive intervention, on growth patterns of adolescent internalizing (anxiety and depressive symptoms) and monthly polysubstance use (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, inhalants, and other illicit drugs), as well as the association between…

In this article, the author discusses three steps that will help administrators build a system that allows them to bring balance back into their life. The first step is to create a picture of how things could be, because real change always comes from the inside. The second step is adjusting their attitude. Controlling their attitude is as…

This study examined the psychosocial correlates and psychometric properties of the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS) (Webster, 2003a). Seventy-three men and 98 women ranging in age from 17-92 years (Mean age = 42.77) completed an expanded, 40-item version of the SAWS, the Loyola Generativity Scale, and the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale.…