Love and romance continue to be important issues within every age group, not merely among the usually studied college students. Two issues, the nature or intensity of the love experienced and the motives or purposes of love were examined for different age groups. The ways in which the pursuit of heterosexual love may change throughout adult life…

Discussions by 56 educators from a Canadian school district on their job satisfactions and dissatisfactions, aspirations, and life transitions in tape recorded interviews provided the primary data for this study of adult development among teachers and administrators. Secondary data were obtained from a questionnaire survey of an additional 383…

An NSF study suggests that important qualitative changes in the faculty may be obtained through increased attention to mid-career change and early retirement programs. Interest in career options, early retirement alternatives, evaluation criteria, mid-career change alternatives, internship, fellowship programs, and retraining programs are…

Reports a study of 20 Canadian associate professors, aged 41-59, which explored how faculty experience the mid-career and mid-life period in academic and community work, personal and family relationships, and sense of self. Identifies a variety of difficult issues for this population, but proposes that adult development theory suggests potential…

An interesting area of adult development is "gender shift": the transition from the traditional life patterns or ways of making meaning that are associated with stereotypically male or female roles. One may experience the wish to fulfill those parts of one's personality often associated with feminine or masculine constructs not yet explored.…

A study was made to determine what developmental tasks typify life stages and how schools have used these tasks and their "teachable moments" to increase employee receptivity to staff development. Data came from a review of adult development and staff development literature, observations of innovative staff development procedures used by school…

Studies have indicated that mature women maintain a permanent role identity along two dimensions, i.e., traditional women or nontraditional women. However, the lifeset of many mature adult women may be on the continuum between these two positions, i.e., in the position of "deferred achiever." The personality variables and sex-role orientations of…

Reports the results of a survey of graduates of the University of Pittsburgh's Masters of Library Science (M.L.S.) program that was conducted to investigate reasons for leaving the profession for other fields or to leave the workforce entirely. Highlights include characteristics and attitudes of at-home versus employed women and their educational…

A study investigated the experience of midcareer adults in self-directed graduate programs. It explored two questions in the researcher's personal experience: as a learner, what caused the researcher's change in learning-orientation from goal- to learning-oriented and, as a teacher, could the researcher justify using both self- and…

This research investigated stability and change in the self-appraisal of having lived up to one's abilities from midlife to later aging. The subjects were 185 participants in the Terman Study of the Gifted, who had been asked to rate themselves with respect to living up to their abilities in 1960 (at an average age of 48) and in 1996 (at an…

In an effort to inform teacher development efforts, a study was conducted to identify and describe the factors involved in making the transition from "other" professional occupations to employment as community college teachers and transforming professional skills into effective teaching practices. The study focused on one female and two male…

Trade and industrial (T & I) occupational programs require teachers who are occupationally competent. Because of this premise, all states select teachers on the basis of their occupational expertise in spite of the possible limitation of little formal education in a teacher education program. Thus, provisions are made to hire teachers from…

The basis for mid-career changes is investigated and ways in which academic counselors can help adults make the transition to a postsecondary educational institution are examined. Two general areas for initiating midcareer changes can be identified: personal motivations and environmental pressures. Nancy Schlossberg (1984) has developed a…

Surveyed randomly selected adults (n=319) in the Chicago metropolitan area and questioned them on whether cultural schedules exist for the timing of life transitions. Respondents perceived deadlines for most of the family transitions discussed. (SNR)

The relative impact of the aging process, pervasive changes in higher education, and career socialization experiences on college faculty members' distributions of work effort was studied. Secondary analyses were completed on the following surveys: the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education Survey (1969) and the Survey of the American…