Analyzing Daniel Levinson´s Seasons Of Man's Life

This paper details Daniel Levinson’s theory “Seasons of a Man’s life”, and it major components of life structure, stages and transitional periods. It will apply his theory to address how an adult learns, specifically how Doctors adapt to new learning opportunities and technological changes.

Human beings begin learning at birth, and we all have capacity to continue this process until we die, yet most behaviorists end their theories in early adulthood. In contrast, Daniel Levinson theory “Seasons of man’s life” takes you in stages, from young adulthood through the elderly state. His theory is significant because it is the only one that suggests that growth and development continues to occur well into adult years. Levinson has
At age 45, we begin the stage of entering into middle adulthood, thoughts and selections are made on future, such contributions to 401k, to ensure financial stability so that they can retire. At this stage we start to face to the reality of Death. We live in denial in our younger years, but now we understand it is not something we can escape, yet we all hope that it comes much later in life, after we have achieved most of our life’s desires. With the decline of our health, and death looming, we change our focus on what will be our legacy. This desire tends to encompass the major portion of second half of individual’s life. Choices may be reflected in volunteerism, or creating/starting on your own personal bucket list. In late adulthood, starting at age 60, individuals are now reflecting on choices that they have made. For example a workaholic, may in fact regret the time lost with family, and may choose to retire early, or an older adult who never finished college or wished for higher education may use this time to fulfill this desire. Adult learners are different than younger learners, for multitude of reasons. As a person ages, not only are physical changes taking place such as reduced vision and hearing ability, but other age related factors, such as impaired blood circulation, decreased neurotransmitters, stress and chronic illness, that can impact cognitive function and have an effect on ability of
Now my hospital did not detail Levinson’s theory in constructing how they were going to educate their Doctors on Electronic Medical Records (EMR), but I can see how the concepts of life structure, stages and transition are weaved in as a crucial element in any process of change. Along with concept that motivators are different with each individual, ways and types that people learn are different, and educators must understand what are each individual’s strengths and weakness. Given that most of our doctors are in the 45-60 age group, concerns that decreased vision and hearing wit, limited attention span, time for learning were concepts we needed to work around. We addressed this by being creative in our education of these adult learners, offering many different ways and times they could participate in learning, such as one on one, visual aids, and drop in times of small group session, where demonstration and participation could be undertaken. Given that this age group also identifies themselves by their experiences, we utilized both the younger doctors who were respected for their knowledge of new procedures and techniques, and older doctors who had a wealth of experience to be champions within the staff for educational support. We also knew that to get buy in from all of the doctors, they needed to see it as valuable resource to them. Concerns focused on that many did not have experience nor desire to work with computers in any way. They were accustomed to paper