Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course

"Elizabeth Hutchison′s latest edition of Dimensions of Human Behavior is a powerful text that captures our changing and developing lives as we each journey through our own distinct life course. The books call our attention to the importance of the interactions of time, people, and environment as our ongoing life story is played out. As social workers, this text draws our attention to the need to better understand development as a cyclical process, unique for each person. Timely client system examples, diverse family development, and good social work implications and interventions are a few of the many strengths in this edition."

                               --Susan Tebb, Dean, School of Social Service, Saint Louis University

Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course, Second Edition presents a life course perspective to help students recognize how multiple dimensions of person and environment work together with dimensions of time to produce patterns in unique life course journeys. It examines general patterns of human behavior in age-graded periods, sources of diversity in life course trajectories, and unique life stories. It is multidimensional in scope and current in theory and research. This completely revised second edition maintains the use of case studies to help students appreciate the diversity of life course trajectories, and all chapters have been updated to reflect social trends and new developments in theory and research.

To reflect the trend toward finer gradations in life phases, this edition addresses nine age-graded periods instead of the six presented in the first edition: Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth; Infancy and Toddlerhood; Early Childhood; Middle Childhood; Adolescence; Young Adulthood; Middle Adulthood; Late Adulthood; and Very Late Adulthood.

Key Features:

• Each chapter opens with orienting questions and narratives to help students think about why the content of the chapter is important for social workers and to put human faces on theory and research
• Key concepts are summarized at the beginning of each chapter to give students an overview of what is to come
• Margin notes are used to help students recognize and think critically about major themes of the life course perspective
• Each chapter ends with a set of practice principles and learning exercises to anchor students′ knowledge about human behavior and to assist students in active exploration of the ideas presented
• Web resources are provided for each chapter

The Changing Life Course is the companion volume to Person and Environment (ISBN 0-7619-8765-7). The two volumes are also available as a Two-Volume Kit (ISBN 0-7619-8803-3). An Instructor′s Manual containing chapter summaries, suggested classroom activities and discussions, and essay and multiple choice questions is also available (ISBN: 0-7619-8804-1).

Elizabeth D. Hutchison received her MSW from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the University at Albany, State University of New York. She was on the faculty in the social work department at Elms College from 1980 to 1987 and was chair of the department from 1982 to 1987. She was on the faculty in the School of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1987 to 2009, where she taught courses in human behavior and the social environment, social work and social justice, and child and family policy; she also served as field practicum liaison. She has been a social worker in health, mental health, aging, and child and family welfare settings and engaged in volunteer work with incarcerated women and environmental justice for farm workers in the Coachella Valley of California. She is committed to providing social workers with comprehensive, current, and useful frameworks for thinking about human behavior. Her other research interests focus on child and family welfare. She lives in Reno, Nevada, where she enjoys hiking around Lake Tahoe and being a hands-on grandmother to two humans and one dog. She collaborates with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada on local social, racial, economic, and environmental justice issues.