International Journal of Behavioral Development

The critical role of the timing of person-context interactions, a central notion of developmental contextualism, is recognised as important in the conceptualisation of the school-to-work transition. As a result, an expanded framework for understanding this transition is employed in the present study. A stratified sample of young adults from former East and from West Germany participated in a 1991 national survey of youth. Retrospective data concerning life events during childhood and adolescence, and progress through school and occupational training, as well as extensive current information regarding attitudes, values, and occupational status, were analysed through the use of survival analyses. Findings revealed important differences in how individual differences and contextual factors contributed to the school-to-work transition in the contrasting environments of former East and West Germany.

In the present study, data were analysed longitudinally on the basis of lifespan developmental psychology to determine if work values and norms change as a result of ageing/maturation or societal trends (i.e. period effects between two measurement waves). Moreover, data were collected to determine if the younger participants showed more change than the older participants. Participants were three age groups, 18, 22, and 26 years old, respectively, in 1987 (N 806). The participants completed a questionnaire in 1987 and 1991. Measures of work values and norms included Absolute Work Centrality, Relative Importance of Work, Obligation Work Norm, Emancipation Norm and Spare Time Norm, and Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Social Work Values. Using tests of differences in over time correlation coefficients, paired t-tests and analyses of variance, the results show that work, and especially intrinsic work values become more important by ageing than by societal trends and that younger participants indeed changed more than the older participants. These results underscore the plea of Schulenberg, Vondracek, and Kim (1993) for a combination of a developmental and individual difference perspective of work value change in career theory and practice.

The present paper presents empirical results from a German panel study which collected longitudinal data regarding the job entry of young adults in six of the top training occupations in the service and technical-industrial sectors. The data clearly demonstrate the influence of gender and social origin on the access to training in particular occupations. Furthermore, the existence of gender and occupation-specific patterns of career development is demonstrated. However, the apprenticeship system also provides mobility opportunities which depend on the specific training occupation. Moving along a certain occupational pathway results in an interplay between the structural opportunities and constraints of occupational contexts, on the one hand, and the young workers’ aspirations and orientations, on the other. These orientations and aspirations were investigated with qualitative methods which helped to identify different modes of biographical action orientations of young workers.

This study takes a lifespan perspective on academic career development across several countries, in examining contributions to aspects of academic work in terms of gender, age groups, and years of experience in higher education. The study was based on the recent International Survey of the Academic Profession (Altbach, 1996). Findings suggest common themes regarding attitudes and activities within the gendered context of academic work that vary from one country to another and among working conditions, activities of teaching, research and service, issues of governance and management, and international dimensions of academic work. A general model is then described of activities and attitudes that constitute academic work. These findings are discussed in terms of strategies for career development that optimise the academic in a context.

British and Chinese participants ranging from 4 years of age to adult were presented with sets of drawings of everyday objects, and asked to match two out of three. The drawings could be matched on colour, subject matter, or visual metaphor. In both cultures there was a significant progression from matching on colour to subject matter, and then from matching on subject matter to metaphor. These age-related differences in the selected basis for matching may reflect age-related changes in focus of interest, and provide experimental data that is consistent with Parsons’ (1987) claims towards the development of understanding about art. The findings of broadly similar age differences in Chinese as well as British children suggest that this pattern of development is not culture-specific. Chinese children, however, showed an earlier and more pronounced progression to matching on metaphor than did the British children, which is hard to reconcile with previous suggestions (see, for example, Parsons, 1987; Winner, 1989) that a progression of interest beyond subject matter may not take place in Eastern cultures. The training Chinese children receive in monitoring detail in pictures and in Chinese characters may facilitate attention to the graphic devices that communicate metaphorical messages.

This study examined the effect of changing social circumstances on adolescents’ future orientation. Focusing on the recent kibbutz crisis, the future orientation of two cohorts of kibbutz and urban boys and girls (N 438) who were high school seniors in 1984 and 1992 was analysed. Results partly supported cohort, gender, and cohort by setting effects in adolescents’ future orientation, indicating that: (1) the 1992 cohort invested more in constructing prospective domains pertaining to adulthood (work and career, marriage and family) and less in military service; (2) the tendency of Israeli adolescents to construe a sex-typed future orientation was stable over time; and (3) that the 1992 kibbutz cohort increased its investment in work and career more than did the 1992 urban cohort. Results were explained in terms of the adaptability of adolescent future orientation to changing social circumstances, and in terms of Heckhausen’s (1977) principle of least necessary expenditure.

Although empathy-related responding has frequently been associated with prosocial behaviour directed towards the target of an individual’s vicarious emotional responding, relations between dispositional prosocial behaviour and sympathy or personal distress have seldom been examined, particularly with a multimethod approach. Kindergarten to third-graders’ empathy-related responses to a ”lm were examined as predictors of dispositional prosocial behaviour as reported by teachers, parents, and peers. Teachers’ ratings of dispositional behaviour were related to children’s facial and skin conductance reactions to the ”lm. Parents’ and peers’ ratings of dispositional prosocial behaviour were infrequently associated with children’s empathy-related responding, although peer reports were positively related to heart rate acceleration for boys. Reasons for the differential patterns of relations for different reporters are considered.

The constructivist and interactionist approach to cognitive development emphasises the importance of the active participation of children in social interactions and their contribution to knowledge acquisition. Peer tutoring is one way of making such a contribution. During the preschool period, children develop specific skills that allow them to assist and guide less competent peers through the learning process. This study was aimed at gaining insight into the potentials of tutoring in young children, and at demonstrating the role of the symmetrical relationship which prevails in peer interaction in expert-novice problem-solving activity. An adult trained 24 boys and girls for a building task. The young “experts” were then observed with 48 same- and different-age novices of the same sex. The results showed that already at this young age, the experts and novices exhibited asymmetric interactions fulfilling the essential functions of tutoring. The tutors geared their actions to the task demands but were not yet sensitive to the novice’s needs. Qualitative analysis of interactive episodes indicate that the symmetrical nature of the two partners’ skills and statuses brought the tutoring closer to several forms of co-operation or to specific parallel work: While guiding the partner, the expert child shared the problem-solving activity with the novice, consolidating his/her own know-how at the same time. The shift—under some circumstances—from asymmetrical interactions to symmetrical co-elaboration suggests a new conception of sociocognitive functioning in the construction of knowledge.