Invitation To The Life Course

Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life discusses in depth the challenges of age, time, and social contexts for the study of aging and later life. Understanding aging (as a process) and later life (as a period) must be accompanied by serious attention to the life course. This brings significant challenges related to time, as gerontologists must describe and explain life patterns over many decades. It also brings significant challenges related to place, as gerontologists must examine how social contexts structure pathways into and through later life, and how those contexts affect the nature and meaning of experiences along the way. This book is a natural extension of the editor's previous work, ""Lives in Time and Place: The Problems and Promises of Developmental Science"" (Baywood, 1999).

Edition after edition, Kathleen Stassen Berger s bestselling textbooks connect all kinds of students to current state of developmental psychology, in an engaging, accessible, culturally inclusive way. Berger s "Invitation to the Life Span" does this in just 15 concise chapters, in a presentation that meets the challenges of exploring the breadth of the life span in a single term. The new edition of "Invitation to the Life Span" incorporates a wide range of new research, especially in fast-moving areas such as brain development and psychopathology, while taking advantage of innovative new tools for media-centered teaching and learning. But throughout, as always, the signature voice of Kathleen Berger ties it all together, with relatable explanations of scientific content, wide ranging cultural examples, and skill-building tools for sharper observation and critical thinking. "

The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points to a radical path to transformation. The Five Invitations: -Don’t Wait -Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing -Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience -Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things -Cultivate Don’t Know Mind These Five Invitations show us how to wake up fully to our lives. They can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with loss or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Awareness of death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us.

Time and place are of the greatest significance for scientific inquiry about human lives. As we seek to better understand the nature and rhythm of the life course in modern societies, its effective analysis and explanation simultaneously becomes more pressing and more complicated. This information is crucial for developing and reforming social policies, services, and interventions aimed at improving human development and welfare. Yet as our scientific treatments have become more elaborate, they have also become more fragmented within and between academic disciplines, across the study of specific life periods, and by method.

This comprehensive handbook provides an overview of key theoretical perspectives, concepts, and methodological approaches that, while applied to diverse phenomena, are united in their general approach to the study of lives across age phases. In surveying the wide terrain of life course studies with dual emphases on theory and empirical research, this important reference work presents probative concepts and methods and identifies promising avenues for future research.

What are the most effective methods for doing life-course research? In this volume, the field's founders and leaders answer this question, giving readers tips on: the art and method of the appropriate research design; the collection of life-history data; and the search for meaningful patterns to be found in the results.

No matter how much is learned, if that learning remains in our heads, it is not enough. Unless learning touches our hearts, it's never going to bring us the wisdom we seek, the peace we desire, or the intimacy and connection for which we yearn. A new and more receptive way of knowing is needed, and is found in this course for the heart. "A Course of Love" was received by Mari Perron and given to be a "new" course in miracles. It is for the heart what "A Course in Miracles" is for the mind. For many, it is the next step in a journey already begun.

Each chapter includes a review of key concepts, guided study questions, and section reviews that encourage students' active participation in the learning process; two practice tests and a challenge test help them assess their mastery of the material. Applications and observational activities are also included.

Despite the well-established consensus on the need for an interdisciplinary research paradigm to understand the unfolding of human lives within their social context, existing empirical research rarely embraces this belief. This volume aims at examining the feasibility and hurdles of interdisciplinarity specific to given research fields by bringing together leading North-American and European researchers in sociology, psychology, social psychology and social demography, all highly concerned with fostering an interdisciplinary perspective for the study of the human life course. The contributions are organized along four major axes, three of them substantive (agency and structure, transitions, and biographical re-constructions) and one methodological (methodological innovations), leaving ample leeway for the contributions to address the specific gains and difficulties of empirical interdisciplinary research within their particular domain. The editors introduce the volume by discussing general features, theoretical linkages, and transversal substantive themes of interdisciplinarity in life course research. Likewise, the volume is ended by the editors’ conclusions based on the contributions; they single out major challenges and difficulties for the interdisciplinary study of the life course, together with some promising research meant to address such difficulties and improve current knowledge about the life course. The volume speaks to both experienced scholars and graduate students of the life course. Advanced scholars will benefit from the latest in life course research domains and from a comprehensive overview of life course methodologies. Graduate students of the life course will find in the book an original introduction to many empirical aspects of life course research and to the application of innovative methods to various research settings, as well as rich bibliographical references from the research literature in English, German and French.