In this article by Eeva Kallio and Anna-Mija Pirttila-Backman, the researchers focus on a collection of research done on adult development in Europe. The article does go over a few different viewpoints including the neo-Piagetian perspectives and the Vygotskian approach to learning. Some of the issues the article covers is how people nowadays are responding to our shifting and complex way of life, how life events affect our well-being and how we think and perceive things; it talks about researcher’s insight into adult cognition, and different “domains” of life, our cognitive, social, and personality domains.

The topic of this piece is the development in adulthood, more specifically this article seems to be looking into different research projects that go over what is affecting adults’ cognition, scientific thinking, and how they are responding to societal/personal strains on their everyday life. To glean information, they use a meta-analysis approach, gathering numerous studies of previously done as well as ongoing research on this topic but each looking at it from different angles. The authors data then would be reports of acts, behaviors, and events, to get this data they would have gotten the reports from public records. To analyze this data they would have used qualitative data analysis to better understand and interpret the information assembled.

This article wasn’t as in-depth as some of the others that I have come across but I thought it was very clear and the topics of research that they went over in the piece was very interesting and were all research pieces I would be very interested in reading myself. Something that I thought was interesting to think about was the relationship between the structure of thinking and the content of thinking, which is the subject of one of the researchers mentioned in the article, Ms. Anna Kajanne. This is a subject I hadn’t ever thought of and I’m quite sure it would be an interesting read.

Kallio, E., & Pirttilä-Backman, A.-M. (2003). Developmental processes in Adulthood – European Research Perspectives. Journal of Adult Development, 10 (3), 135-138. doi:10.1023/A:1023426028821

https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789/49701/developmentalprocessesinadulthoode.pdf?sequence=1

The author of this article, Alan S. Waterman, from Trenton State College, goes over people’s development of their identities and how and why they may try and change it over the course of their journey into adulthood. The foundation of the theory he is looking at is E.H. Erikson’s and then using a number of other research projects done to build off of Erikson’s findings. The author discusses the ideas and findings of when one’s identity will begin to change and the hypothesis that over time people’s progressive shifts as they get older will bring them to start thinking of what beliefs, social status, etc., that they want to commit themselves to. The piece focuses on the direction, timing of identity development, sex differences, and the identification of antecedent conditions that may have influenced the developmental pathways.

The overall topic of the article is the developmental process of one’s identity as they reach adulthood, but the question posed in it is whether or not the transition into adulthood involves a progressive strengthening in the sense of identity. Waterman is looking at whether or not direction, timing, sex, and antecedent conditions that perhaps have a hand in effecting the progression of one’s identity as they come into adulthood; to do this he gathered several studies together and in the way of meta-analysis he looked at shallow opinions & attitudes as well as deeply held opinions & attitudes (survey’s and in-depth interviews). This data was of previously done research so the author would have gotten this information from public records, then to analyze this data he would have used thematic analysis which allows him to find any themes raised in the set of texts, interview transcripts, etc.

The research was at times a bit hard to follow because of the intricate wording of the author but the overall points that he was making in each section came through and was very insightful. Something that I found quite interesting was when Waterman went over the idea that if one is given a greater range of identity alternatives in their childhood the more likely that person will undergo an identity crisis which before I may have thought the opposite.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alan_Waterman2/publication/232489351_Identity_development_from_adolescence_to_adulthood_An_extension_of_theory_and_a_review_of_research/links/0fcfd50c25968422e2000000/Identity-development-from-adolescence-to-adulthood-An-extension-of-theory-and-a-review-of-research.pdf

In this research article by Sarah E. Bergen, Charles O. Gardner, and Kenneth S. Kendler, the researchers chose to explore genetic influences on people’s behavior during their adolescence and their young adult years. They examined primary research that minimized the age-to-age error variability.  They look at externalized behaviors, anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, IQ, and social attitudes and nonsignificant increases for alcohol consumption, and nicotine initiation. To help them distinguish between the possibilities they used longitudinal studies, all together helping them look at not just one point in a person’s life to find if environment makes significant changes to a person but looking at the differences across a lifespan. They also only studied phenotypes that have been repeatedly studied to, what I assume, maximize the accuracy of their findings. They focused on the ages between 13 and 25, they mention that during childhood children are affected by the environment that their parents may keep them but as we get older and have more freedom to change our surroundings this is where we might start seeing changes in heritability. They chose this because those are times in our lives where our dynamics and environment are most likely to change the most.

The researcher’s topic is of changes in adolescents and young adults is narrowed by their search to determine whether measures of heritability for a variety of phenotypic domains manifest increases over time. They used meta-analysis, through their collections of different forms of research to study, to get their data which was reports of acts, behaviors, or events. They gathered their data using public records and once everything was collected thematic analysis would have been best used for this information because they were looking for themes or relationships between their data.

I thought this research was very interesting, it was different data that I have been seeing on my topic which I really enjoyed. What I found most interesting I think was that in their results they found that there was actually significant heritability differences between males and females in terms of their externalized behaviors. I thought it was interesting because so far in class we haven’t seen much significant differences between the sexes so I was a bit shocked to see it was detected in this research.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2f07/49f79825120fb6296cdd97bcd7273a99ae51.pdf

In this proposal by Jeffrey Arnett from the University of Maryland College Park, Arnett walks through his proposal for a new theory for what he calls emerging adulthood. He argues that there is a period between adolescence and young adulthood called emerging adulthood which happens during the years of 18-25. He begins his proposal by laying out theoretical background and providing evidence for his theory by showing how this period of life is different demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity. He also gives reason for why emerging adulthood is different from adolescence and young adulthood in light of different life aspects such as romantic relationships, work, and worldviews. At the end of his proposal he explains in what kind of conditions emerging adulthood is most likely to exist and why.

The direction he seemed to be going in terms of structure was meta-analysis. He uses surveys, previous theories, research, and reports and with them all in collection he was able to come to a more general conclusions especially about American society where emerging adulthood is very prevalent. The type of data that would be gathered for his research would fall more under reports of acts, behaviors, or events because although he is drawing his own conclusions he is building evidence through previously made reports and tracking the changes as time goes on and as society changes. With his use of reports of acts, behavior, or events he will no doubt be collecting this data through the use of public records. His method of analysis would be thematic analysis because he is looking for themes in the collected data to show social trends.

After reading this proposal I feel like I have a better understanding of what I will need to write a proposal of my own. I thought Arnett was extremely convincing his proposal was very organized and as he went on it was easy to remember by the end what was read at the beginning because he kept all of his information linked together without any annoying repetition of information.

http://jeffreyarnett.com/ARNETT_Emerging_Adulthood_theory.pdf

In this article, “Social Change and Transitions to Adulthood in Historical Perspective” by John Modell, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Theodore Hershberg, the authors speak about the difference between peoples’ transitions into adulthood; comparing the males and females from 1880 to the males and females in 1970. They explain that there are multiple aspects of life that must be considered to see why and if there are changes from 1880 to 1970. The different stages that they closely speculate are the times when youths exit school, when they enter the workforce, become independent from their household origin, and when they get married. They compared the positive and negative relationships between all these phases within their respective years and then compare those years against each other. All this information is looked at in the article to see if there is a change in the patterns of adulthood transitions.

The topic of this article was growing up, the authors more specifically wanted to know if in fact youth has become “extended, normless, and lacking bounds” as has been suggested. To this they found that it is quite the opposite. To answer this question the authors required quantitative data which they used to compare the numbers of people in 1880 and 1970 in each of the transitional phases. They gathered these numbers with the use of pubic records. The method of data analysis would have been interval/ratio data, their data was numeric and their question required them to compare the difference in the numbers of people in each transitional phase and how that affected the numbers in each upcoming phase.

At first I thought this research was very complex and entangled but when the authors explained each step and how everything was  interconnected it made perfect sense and was extremely interesting. What I found to be most interesting was the increase in independence that transitioning youths have today compared to the youths in the nineteenth century.

Modell, John, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr, and Theodore Hershberg. “Social change and transitions to adulthood in historical perspective.” Journal of family history 1.1 (1976): 7-32.

In this article the author, Daniel J. Levinson, with the use of collected research, talks about adult development and its various phases. He goes over peoples’ life course, life cycle, and the “eras” of a person’s life cycle; he goes over the life structure and its development in adulthood. Along with this he talks about the overall study of adult development as its own respective field. He discusses that people can not necessarily be defined just by adolescence and use that as a basis of comparison for how people turn out as seniors. Not only must one’s mature or adult stages of life be considered but the phases within those years and the events within those phases must be understood to make proper connections. These phases must also not be put in hierarchical positions because no phase that people go through is necessarily better than the ones that precede it they are just an old phase that will eventually be grown out of.

The topic of this article is adult development and what Levinson is specifically looking at are the phases between the ages of 17 to 65 which he considers the lifespan of the adult years. For this research, he used reports of acts, behavior, and events building off of previously done research on this topic. To gather this, he would have used public records/research that was already published which required in depth analysis of the qualitative data found.

I found this research to be incredibly insightful into the phases of adulthood which was something I always lumped together as one phase. Seeing people’s lives broken down into a structure that can be carried across to all types of people was fascinating. It gave me a better look into adulthood  gives an incredible as well as objective perspective on this topic. One thing that was the most interesting to me was seeing how he broke down the adult life span into nine separate groups but keeping with his idea that there is no hierarchy among them only transitions from one phase to another without any being better or less developed than the others.

Levinson, Daniel J. “A Conception of Adult Development.” American Psychologist 41, No. 1 (1986): 3-13.

This article, “Reflections on ‘A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming’” by Sigmund Tobias and J.D. Fletcher, summarizes findings from a review of 95 studies on gaming and its possible use in education. The article suggests that for games to help students with tasks in the physical world there would need to be an overlap with the content of the game and the tasks at hand. It also goes over the effect that aggressive games can have on the students, the aggressive content has the possibility of instilling aggressive behavior in the player that they can act out in person. To fix this issue the articles suggests that gaming companies should create games that have “prosocial themes that have been shown… to be effective in increasing outcomes such as conflict resolution and helping reactions.” However, this would not necessarily mean this would decrease aggression, that would require further research. The article does say however that at the current moment the “enthusiasm” over the idea to integrate gaming into students learning curriculum is still not backed up with enough evidence.

The article focuses on gaming and students and more specifically asking whether there is enough evidence to say that gaming can or cannot help students learn. For this article, they required reports of acts, behavior, or events to help them get to a consensus on the data. They would have gotten this data from public records, they examined data from reports and articles already published. To analyze their data, they would have used qualitative data analysis/thematic analysis.

I found that this research better clarified how society is trying to use technology, and in this case gaming, more integrally in everyday life. I felt that this article was successful in showing the possible pros and cons of using gaming to help teach students; explaining that although merit might be found that there really is not enough evidence to support using gaming in the curriculum like some other articles may suggest.

Tobias, Sigmund., Fletcher, J.D. (2012). Reflections on “A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming”. Review of Educational Research, 82(2), 233 – 237. 10.3102/0034654312450190

This article “Our Princess Is in Another Castle: A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming for Education” by Michael F. Young, Stephen Slota, Andrew B. Cutter, Gerard Jalette, Greg Mullin, Benedict Lai, Zeus Simeoni, Mathew Tran, Mariya Yukhymenka sought to find out if the higher use of video games would mean that students K-12 would benefit scholastically. The article seeks to see if video games effect the students, such as their level of achievement and interest in subjects like masth, science, language, history, and physical education.

The topic of this piece was to find the “connection between video game and classroom achievement and to establish the unique affordances and benefits video games may have for school learning.” Their research question was to “determine whether or not the overarching technology has reached enough of a ‘tipping point’ in the past 30 years to support the claim that video games can enhance classroom learning.” The type of data this article needed was reports of acts, behavior, or event. To do this the authors used meta-analysis collecting, at first, academic journals as well as dissertations, thesis papers, and research reports but they found they had to expand their “scope” so they also collected quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods designs, case studies and conceptual articles.

As I read the article I found that, although I believe youths K-12 have an addiction to their technology, I saw the merit in this research. The evidence shows that video games may in fact have a positive effect on students in the classroom. It shows signs of higher motivation, a better grasp on a subject, better test scores, an increase in achievement; however, these findings are by no means found across the board. I did think it very interesting, though, that some students who just observed video games grasped information on a subject better than the actual players, something I would not have guessed.

Each subject had studies that showed positives and negatives and so the question is still only a maybe but it does show the possibilities of what could happen if video games were properly introduced into the academic curriculum.