Postsecondary dance technique teachers negotiate extensive physical demands throughout their careers. As they rise through the academic ranks, their bodies age, and with age sometimes comes limited mobility, decreasing strength, and injuries. Further, mental and emotional processes and self-perceptions sometimes change in response to diminishing…

Public awareness of demographic change is necessary to guide individual and national planning for retirement. For the first time in American history, older adults are forecast to soon outnumber children. Accordingly, expectations for retirement should be considered in a larger than personal context, a broad perspective that implicates relatives,…

Psychological effects of disengagement from a work life and the transition to retirement are discussed. These effects include partial identity disruption, decision paralysis, diminished self trust, experience of a post retirement void, the search for meaningful engagement in society, development of a retirement/life structure, the confluence of…

As a consequence of local population ageing, which is more pronounced in rural areas, the issue of maintaining a positive quality of life for rural older people is attracting significant attention. While environmental psychology theory has advocated the role of place identity in defining the self, there has been little applied research exploring…

The health benefits of musical engagement extend across the lifespan, with research documenting developmental and quality of life outcomes in senior adulthood. Whilst the psychological functions of music include three broad domains: cognitive, emotional and social, the social factors of music consumption have been, for the most part, ignored. This…

The capacity to measure change is essential in examining successful adaptation to ageing. Few studies measuring change have compared findings using pre-post approaches (employing difference scores) with those from retrospective approaches (employing self-ratings). Where this has occurred, differences have been attributed either to ceiling and…

New perspectives need to be gained on the roles of older adults and older workers in the new millenium. Because today's adult is healthier, policies concerning social security, retirement, and work need to be changed. There is a need for acceptance of various types of aging. Rather than mandating specific retirement, the individual should have…

This study examined four older adults at the time of retirement to determine the extent to which there was intraindividual variability and stability in self-concept during the retirement transition, and to see whether patterns of change were replicable across subjects. Results showed that three to four dimensions of self-concept variability…

This study examined older adults' quality of interpersonal relationships and self-concept through semi-structured interviews with 39 70-year-old people in Malmo, Sweden. The gathered data is described on individual and group levels. Findings indicate that the elderly in this group have frequent contacts with their children and siblings. They…

A number of factors and trends contribute to an increase in older adults in the workforce including demographics, financial concerns, changing concepts of retirement, longer and healthier life spans, and demand for the knowledge and skills possessed by the current generation of older workers. Careers are now considered to be more fluid, nonlinear…

This guide for educators, human service workers, and others interested in social gerontology contains four sections covering fifteen subject areas/sessions. Unit 1, Societal Structure and Its Relationship to the Aged, presents data concerning demographics of the aging population, historical factors having an impact upon value processing of older…