James E. Thornton

Life-span learning: a developmental perspective.

The article discusses learning as embedded processes of development and aging, and as social activity over the life course. The concept of life-span learning is proposed and outlined to discuss these processes as aspects of and propositions in life-span development and aging theory. Life-span learning processes arise and continuously develop in a dynamically complex body, brain, and the mind they support as essential features of development and aging over the life course. Life-span learning processes are established by evolutionary adaptive mechanisms, enriched by challenging environments, and continuously developed in supportive social structures. These ideas are derived from evolutionary biology and psychology, the cognitive sciences, life-span development and aging research, and adult development and learning studies. It is argued that life-span learning activities that challenge the body-mind-brain nexus are indispensable to optimize individual development and aging. Three global interventions and their strategies are discussed that enhance life-span learning: Learning to Learn, Learning for Growth, and Learning for Well-being.

The guided autobiography method: a learning experience.

This article discusses the proposition that learning is an unexplored feature of the guided autobiography method and its developmental exchange. Learning, conceptualized and explored as the embedded and embodied processes, is essential in narrative activities of the guided autobiography method leading to psychosocial development and growth in dynamic, temporary social groups. The article is organized in four sections and summary. The first section provides a brief overview of the guided autobiography method describing the interplay of learning and experiencing in temporary social groups. The second section offers a limited review on learning and experiencing as processes that are essential for development, growth, and change. The third section reviews the small group activities and the emergence of the “developmental exchange” in the guided autobiography method. Two theoretical constructs provide a conceptual foundation for the developmental exchange: a counterpart theory of aging as development and collaborative-situated group learning theory. The summary recaps the main ideas and issues that shape the guided autobiography method as learning and social experience using the theme, “Where to go from here.”

Book Reviews : Adult Education for the 1970's: Promise or Illusion?:

The war has &dquo;ended&dquo; but there is little rejoicing in the land. The problems that we are facing are multiple and complex. The crisis that has been cooled down in Viet Nam may be replaced by other difhculties in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and within our own country. Within the United States, we sense a lack of ease, a growing alienation from the world of work, a failure of our national leadership to inspire confidence from the young, increasing difF~culties of our citizenry to influence the nature of our priorities as a nation, the lack of substantial improvement of the conditions under which minorities live, including the aged, and our continuing failure to fulfill the American Dream of equalitarianism. A simplistic response is that we need better leadership, but leadership is not enough unless we find some way of raising the level of consciousness, (in spite of the pessimistic views of many of our elites and such scholars as Michels, Pareto, and Gaetano Moscal), among

Issues Affecting Gerontology Education and Manpower Needs in Population Aging.

This paper discusses seven major issues that will affect the development of gerontology education in response to manpower needs in aging in Canada. These issues concern the definitions of aging for educational and manpower policy, manpower forecasting, knowledge base in gerontology, gerontology as an academic field or as a professional field, development of education programs, employment opportunities, and factors in supply and demand. The author stresses the importance of creating baseline data about manpower needs and occupational settings and about the knowledge base of gerontology in Canada.

Guided autobiography's developmental exchange: what's in it for me?

The developmental exchange is a central feature of social development, interpersonal dynamics, situated learning, and personal transformation. It is the enabling process in Guided Autobiography (GAB) settings that promotes the achievement of personal goals and group accomplishments. Nevertheless, these exchanges are embedded in the GAB structures of time, events, participants, themes, perspectives, medium, and quest for relevance. Ongoing research studies are gradually clarifying the actual, ideal, and social image of self as well as the processes, outcomes, and specific learning topics achieved during the GAB experience as they unfold through the listening, participating, and diversifying structures of the developmental exchange.

Human Factors in Aging: Issues for Adult Education

As adult educators our education and training efforts in the later years should be based on images of the older person as person. If these images are guided largely by problem or deficiency assumptions, and they often are in our study of aging in the workplace, we negatively stereotype both the person and their needs, and also the later years as a period of time. Images of the older person should allow for aging to imply some purpose. As adult educators we should assume that the person is designed to learn and to adapt through the life-span: the dynamics and structures for learning are embedded in the neurophysiological mechanisms of the organism and influenced by psychosocial and sociocultural factors of the environment.