Adult Development Theory Research Articles

The use of constructive-developmental theory to advance the understanding of leadership

Constructive-developmental theory is a stage theory of adult development that focuses on the growth and elaboration of a person's ways of understanding the self and the world. In this article we review how the constructive-developmental frameworks of Kegan [Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], Torbert [Torbert, W. R. (1987). Managing the corporate dream: Restructuring for long-term success. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.], and Kohlberg [Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. New York: Rand McNally] have been applied in the theoretical and empirical literature on leadership and management. Although the literature has produced a number of propositions, the notion that a leader's order of development should impact his or her leadership effectiveness or managerial performance has generated the most research. We found mixed support for this proposition as well as a number of limitations in the research in general. To have a greater impact on the leadership field, constructive-developmental theory needs to generate more robust research, to link more clearly with on-going streams of leadership research, and to explore the contribution of aspects of the theory beyond individual order of development.

Paths to Late Midlife Well-Being for Women and Men: The Importance of Identity Development and Social Role Quality

Theories of adult development suggest that personality development and social role involvements are sources of adult well-being for both men and women. However, previous research on this topic has focused mainly on (a) women, and (b) early stages of adulthood. We tested an alternative model for predicting late-midlife adults’ well-being, with role quality, number of roles, and healthy adaptation to late midlife (reflected in lower concern about aging) as mediators of the relationship between young adult identity development and well-being in late midlife. Results indicated that the model fit women’s experience very well, and men’s experience somewhat. Follow-up analyses indicated that the model fit men’s experience with respect to family role quality, but that young adult identity played a lesser role in men’s well-being in later midlife, and that problems in the late-midlife work role were reflected in concerns about aging for men, but not for women.

Taking Up Our Elders' Burdens as Our Own: African American Women against Elder Financial Fraud

��� The following article reports the preliminary research findings of a phenomenological assessment of the experiences of African American women ages 35 to 64, providing individual and collective advocacy supports for elder family members besieged by the contemporary forms of economic terrorism that include community redlining, predatory lending, financial fraud, housing piracy, and home foreclosure. The impetus and precedents for the actions of our African American women clients who have experienced economic terrorism are discussed through the lenses of African American womanist leadership theory, black feminist thought, and adult development theory. This mid-life generation saga traverses the underworld of institutionalized legal and financial discrimina tion aimed at disabling personal agency and obstructing the restoration of these African American women’s elder family members’ financial credit, home equity, and home sites. Provided is a discussion of: (1) the macro and micro implications of predatory lending and financial discrimina tion in the context of patriarchy; (2) the issues of co-victimization for the African American women serving as elder advocates; (3) the process of regaining voice and reclaiming purpose; and (4) the actualizing phases of leadership as evidenced by sustained social action.

Strategies for Teaching Self-Care with Type 2 Diabetes: Focus on Adult Development Theory

Strategies for Teaching Self-Care with Type 2 Diabetes: Focus on Adult Development Theory

Learning the Superintendency: Socialization, Negotiation, and Determination

National attention to a possible superintendent shortage has created concern about the changing nature of the superintendency, particularly new challenges, and how superintendents are prepared. Through 23 focus group interviews, superintendents across the country described the challenges they faced when new, how these have changed in recent years, and the benefits and gaps of their leadership preparation. Through a grounded theory analysis and comparison with relevant adult learning and leadership development theories, this article argues that structured advanced leadership development experiences could improve superintendents’ leadership development and transition. The article recommends that these experiences be structured as a learning community that is experiential and intensively reflective.

The Role of Mentoring in Developing African American Nurse Leaders

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the role of mentoring in the development of African American nurses who have achieved leadership positions in baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs. This study also explored similar and dissimilar mentoring experiences in same-race versus cross-race mentoring relationships. The theoretical framework for this study was Levinson's adult developmental theory. A sequential mixed design was utilized. Forty-seven African American nurse leaders participated in Phase 1, and 10 of the 47 were interviewed in Phase 2. The findings showed that mentoring plays a role in the personal and professional development of African American nurse leaders in baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs. Moreover, the relevance of race varies in both same-race and cross-race mentoring relationships.

Alcohol Misuse, Abuse, and Addiction in Young and Middle Adulthood

This chapter reviews research on alcohol misuse, abuse, and addiction in young and middle adulthood. Young adulthood is defined as ages 21 to 35 and middle adulthood as ages 36 to 65. The authors searched the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and other databases for the years 1992 through 2004 using the terms alcohol abuse, alcoholism, and alcohol dependence, then hand-searched for the inclusion of age as a variable. The search was limited to research and English-language publications. Unpublished dissertation studies were excluded, as were topics that were reviewed in other chapters of this volume. When possible, articles for review were limited to alcohol only, as compared with other drugs of abuse. Research articles were selected for review if they contained the variables alcohol misuse, abuse, or alcohol addiction or dependence and age. The review included both nurse- and non-nurse-investigators and was comprised of 50 studies. The results are in four content areas across the global area of alcohol misuse, abuse, and dependence in young and middle adulthood: incidence and prevalence, developmental changes, the work setting, and the family setting. Few articles used a developmental framework, although in some studies, the framework was implicit. Nurse-investigators were more likely to produce qualitative studies, although the studies varied dramatically in size of sample, research design, and variables. Overall, there was greater breadth than depth. The use of adult developmental theory was limited despite its potential explanatory potential in this field. There is a need for more nurse-researchers to explore adult developmental theory and pay increased attention to age and developmental stage as explanatory variables.

The developmental course of Personal Authority in the Family System.

The present study examined the differences in participants' intergenerational family relationships across the following three age/stage groups based on Williamson's (1991) theory of Personal Authority in the Family System (PAFS) and adult developmental theory (Levinson, 1986): ages 18-23, 24-29, and 30-45. The most noteworthy variables were intergenerational intimacy and intimidation with mothers and fathers, with significant but less contribution by intergenerational triangulation with fathers. Results indicated that each successively older group reported significantly less intimacy and less intimidation with each parent, and less triangulation with fathers than the previous younger group. Small gender differences were also present, but without an interaction with age/stage groups. Females reported slightly healthier intergenerational relationships with parents than did males. Finally, implications for clinical practice are presented.

Testing the Adult Development Tower of Babel Hypothesis: Homogeneous by Perry Position Collaborative Learning Groups and Graduate Student Satisfaction

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate what appears to be a grounding assumption in some adult developmental and educational research: persons of differing epistemologies who are grouped together will understand one another less well than persons who are grouped homogeneously. A robust effect is discussed within the context of adult development theory, research on collaborative learning groups, and Bruffee's social constructionist challenge (K. A. Bruffee, 1993) to Perry and to cognitive development theory. Collateral research questions relating to covariates of developmental position (according to the Perry scheme) are entertained; confirmatory qualitative data are presented.

A New World Order

This article explores new connections between the current literature base on adult developmental theory and the field of learning disabilities. The authors use these new relationships to gain insights into outcomes for people with learning disabilities when they are no longer children and the causes of these outcomes. An emphasis is placed on the relationships between current theory and practice in self-determination and adult development. Future directions for research are suggested, as well as ideas for innovative paradigms to be considered by professionals in the fields of special education, vocational education, general education, and adult learning.

An Analysis of Identity Change in Adulthood

Despite increasing evidence that identity changes in adulthood do take place, there is little knowledge about what the process of change looks like. We perceive identity change as a change in the organization and rules that underlie identity commitments. Based on script theory (Tomkins, 1995) and on notions about the processes in adult development and clinical theories, we developed a conceptualization of this process. Conflicts are seen as the potential trigger of change. People may react to conflicts with assimilation, withdrawal, or accommodation. Accommodation implies identity change. The process of accommodation consists of increasing exploration and knowledge of oneself. We distinguish different steps in this accommodation process. In a case study, empirical evidence for these steps was found.

The growing evidence for personality change in adulthood: Findings from research with personality inventories

Theories of adult development all agree that adulthood is a time of important changes in goals, resources, and coping. Yet, impressed with the rank-order stability of individual differences in personality, many researchers interested in personality traits and personality assessment doubt that personality changes in meaningful and systematic ways during adulthood. This article reviews large studies of mean-level change in personality characteristics measured with broad-band personality inventories, and includes both cross-sectional and cross-cohort longitudinal research. The results show considerable generalizability across samples, cohorts, and studies. In particular, people score higher with age on characteristics such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and norm-adherence, and they score lower with age on social vitality. These findings provide evidence that personality does change during adulthood and that these changes are non-negligible in size, systematic, not necessarily linear, and theoretically important.

Stage Development Theory: A Natural Framework for Understanding the Mediation Process

Scholars and practitioners of mediation have generally paid little attention to the development of theoretical frameworks for understanding what is taking place in the mediation process. By “borrowing” from stages of adult psychological development theory (in this scheme, physical; bedonistic/impulsive; conformist/authority‐seeking; rational/individualistic; and integrative), we can better understand some of the behaviours that people exhibit in mediation and perhaps find ways to help parties expand their bhavioural repertoires so that new avenues for resolution appear to them. Using frequent examples from mediation practice, the author desribes each stage, then assesses the limits and possibilities of relating this theoretical frame work to mediation. She sees this juxtaposition of theory to practice not so much as a “how to” for mediation practice, but rather as a new window through which mediators can view mediation clients, the mediation process, and their own behavior in the mediation room.

College-educated women's personality development in adulthood: Perceptions and age differences.

Adulthood encompasses a large time span and includes a series of psychosocial challenges (E. H. Erikson, 1950). Five aspects of personality (identity certainty, confident power, concern with aging, generativity, and personal distress) were assessed in a cross-sectional study of college-educated women who at the time of data collection were young adults (age: M = 26 years), middle-aged adults (age: M = 46 years), or older adults (age: M = 66 years). Respondents rated each personality domain for how true it was of them at the time, and they then rated the other 2 ages either retrospectively or prospectively. Results are discussed with attention to the ways in which women's adult development may have been shaped by experiences particular to both gender and birth cohort, and to how these women fit with E. H. Erikson's theory of adult development.

Development and Disequilibration: Predicting Counselor Trainee Gain and Loss Scores on the Supervisee Levels Questionnaire

Relative importance of adult cognitive development (according to Perry), education, and experience in predicting longitudinal gain and loss scores on a measure of counselor supervisee development (Supervisee Levels Questionnaire) was examined. Results indicated cognitive & #x2013;developmental stage predicted score change better than age, education, or experience. In addition, an unanticipated, discontinuous, patterned relationship between student cognitive stage and the gain/loss scores was discovered. The possibility of developmental disequilibration is discussed along with implications for counselor education and adult development theory.

Images, Transformative Learning and the Work of Soul

While studying for his GED math test, Mitch became frustrated, threw his pencil, angrily pushed back his chair and remarked, can't get this stuff. I would rather be doing pottery. That would be something! In a course on adult learning, Marie discovered a reading on adult development theory that was helping her to understand what had been going on in her life. Finally, at the conclusion of a collaborative learning workshop, a middle-aged woman who had been with the community college for many years observed, Dr. Dirkx, I really like these ideas and can see how they would be useful to our learners. But, she continued with resignation in her voice, simply don't have the time or resources in our classes to do all these things you suggest. These scenarios demonstrate that subject matter can evoke deeply personal responses among adult learners, which manifests in distinctive emotional reactions. They illustrate that what adults learn is fundamentally grounded in the way they think about themselves and their worlds, opening possibilities for transformation and creating dramatic shifts in one's consciousness. As is often the case with transformation theory, educators interpret such statements literally and regard them as inherently rational, intentional and largely conscious. What if our thoughts about such reactions were regarded as fantasies or products of the learners' imaginations? Grounded in post-Jungian thought (Samuels, 1985) and the world of (Hillman, 1975, 2000; Moore, 1996), this article covers an approach to understanding and facilitating transformative learning in which emotional reactions to the text are regarded as imagistic manifestations of inner Hillman (2000) and Moore refer to the act of learning to work with images that populate thoughts, feelings and actions as soul work, which is critical to personal transformation (Dirkx, 2001). The Self and Other in Transformative Learning Post-Jungian scholars theorize humans to be constituted by a conscious waking self in dynamic interaction with a powerful unconscious. Although we usually identify with the waking self, the unconscious is very powerful in shaping consciousness. The unconscious is made up of clusters of psychic energy or that, at different times and situations, populate and shape the waking self (Watkins, 2000) and make up the total personality. People embody all these selves, their relationships with each and the relationships they each have with others in the outer world. Within any given situation, we unconsciously identify with, and unknowingly act for, one or more of these In the opening vignettes, learners expressed particular selves that reflect certain aspects of their unconscious with the outer conscious world. Some thing or other within the learning environment is evoking certain energies within their unconscious that express aspects of a particular unconscious self. This other can be frustration with a math problem, a vision of what it means to be a teacher or excitement in developmental stories. Depending on the situation in which they find themselves, a different sense of the other will be encountered, different energies constellated and different expressed. When doing pottery, Mitch may become a self-confident and contented artisan as opposed to an angry GRE taker. In her classroom, the aforementioned community college teacher might move fluidly and with grace among her academically underprepared students. Lastly, Marie's discovery of developmental theory might be at a loss how to share this growing excitement with her family. The learner's interaction with the text often leads to expression of one or more of these inner selves. When consciously realized, these expressions can lead to a more clear recognition and differentiation of the various that populate the learner's being. Vague emotions and feelings that seem to haunt the waking consciousness become more differentiated and fully elaborated. …

Family Involvement and Schizophrenia: A Developmental Model

SUMMARY This paper presents the Family Involvement and Schizophrenia model, an adaptation of Rolland's Family Systems/Illness model (1994). Rolland's model conceptualized the development of the individual, family, and illness in psychosocial terms using adult developmental theory and family life cycle concepts. The Family Involvement and Schizophrenia Model builds on this prior work, and consists of (1) a psychosocial typology of illness based on characteristics often associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and which are hypothesized to impact individual development and family relationships and (2) the changing psychosocial demands and family relationships at different phases of the illness, which represent an integration of the age-linked stages of individual development with the fluctuations in family cohesion over the life cycle. The Family Involvement and Schizophrenia model will enable clinicians, researchers, and families to conceptualize changing family relationships, and to target individuals and families at greatest stress points in order to provide more individualized treatment over the life cycle.

Attitudes Towards Work and Family Roles and Their Implications for Career Growth of Women: A Report from India

This paper explored attitudes towards work and family roles of professional men and women in India. Ninety-two husband–wife pairs from salaried, upper middle class, dual-career families in India participated in the study. Propositions based on adult development theories of men and women, regarding reward value derived from and commitment made to occupational, parental, marital, and homemaker roles over the life cycle, were tested. Results indicated that there was no change with age, in attitudes towards occupational and homemaker roles. Instead, gender-based differences in attitudes towards these roles were observed. Attitudes towards the marital and parental role varied across the life cycle, although not in keeping with propositions based on the adult development theories of men and women. There was no reversal in attitudes towards work and family roles of men and women after midlife. Rather, some reversal in attitudes appeared to occur between the marital and parental role, over the life span of both men and women. Results are reviewed within the Indian cultural context and their implications for the career development of women are discussed.

Life Role Salience: A Study of Dual-Career Couples in the Indian Context

To explain career development of professional men and women, the developmental approach is becoming increasingly popular as it allows for a broad perspective encompassing both work and family roles. It recognizes the fact that developmentally men and women are different. The present study explored whether, for dual-career couples working in the Indian context, the salience attached to different life roles by male and female partners does indeed vary differentially across the life cycle in keeping with the propositions of the adult developmental theories of men and women. Data were collected from 92 dual-career couples. Results provided only partial support for the propositions of adult development theories, examined in terms of the differences between the life role salience of male and female partners. In particular, the expected reversal of salience attached to work and family roles at mid-life, between men and women, was not evident. Our results seem to challenge the universality of the existing developmental frameworks and suggest the need to broaden the theoretical base to incorporate diverse socio-cultural realities that have a bearing on life role salience.

Alzheimer's disease as a “trip back in time”

Persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) seem to vary from day to day in their recall of loved ones' names and faces. Such erratic fluctuating and regressive cognition is often puzzling and stressful to caregivers. This paper explores the possibility of conceptualizing AD as a “trip back in time” to help caregivers understand the variation in an AD person's memory, behavior, and physical abilities. Clinical observations suggest that these individuals experience a cognitive, emotional, social, physical and functional regression with AD. The “trip back in time” paradigm uses aspects of Piaget's theory of adult development in reverse, Reisberg and associates FAST and GDS, and other cognitive, behavioral, and affective research on AD. Using past research to indicate how patients tend to lose many of their functions, the conceptualization goes further to advance a non-linear regression model of AD. This paradigm of AD as a “trip back in time” uses connecting loops spiraling downward to depict the fluctuating regression. Previous theoretical frameworks have tended to rely solely on fixed stage regression models of AD. The insight this model provides will hopefully increase gerontologist/caregivers' understanding and provide new ways to develop strategies to enhance future caregiving techniques.