Job and career changes are increasingly common due to the uncertainties of the economic environment, technological changes, and new attitudes toward work. The more drastic of these transitions--changing careers--is often linked to the developmental stage of midlife. This ERIC DIGEST reviews current thinking about what motivates adults to change careers and the concepts of life/career cycles. Implications of the new models for helping adults in transition are described.

What is the global economy? What skills will people need to participate in it? How can a refocused career education contribute to educational reform and competitiveness? These questions are explored in this ERIC DIGEST.

A young married mother decides to give up her prestigious full-time job with a Big 8 accounting firm and do consulting part time out of her home so she can spend more time with her baby. A 38-year-old chemical analyst with a research company decides to start his own business when he encounters roadblocks to his career advancement ... A woman in her late forties decides to leave her role as full-time homemaker, return to school, and pursue a job as a nurse. These adults experienced discomfort in their life situations, which propelled them to reconsider their careers and readjust their career expectations. Learning how to move from situations we consider negative to positive ones is an outcome of self-renewal. This Digest examines several perspectives on life cycles and change and presents strategies for negotiating change through self-renewal. It suggests a process for applying these strategies to career development.

Change in the workplace continues at a rapid pace, affecting careers and career development. Mergers, acquisitions, reengineering, and downsizing are influencing employment patterns and altering the career directions of many. No longer are individuals advised to think in terms of spending their entire careers in one organization. Rather, they are being led to recognize the temporary nature of all jobs and the need to prepare themselves for redefined career paths that require resilience and an ability to be self-reliant. This Digest defines the concept of career resilience, including the characteristics of individuals who are career resilient and the characteristics of organizations that support career resilience.

What is triggering the industrial, occupational, and geographical mobility of today's workers? Some believe it is a response to downsizing and restructuring. Others believe it reflects a pursuit for job advancement and a better quality of life. This digest examines the factors triggering workers' career mobility and suggests ways workers can use career mobility to capitalize on the dynamics of a changing workplace.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 prompted many people to ask "What am I doing with my life?" and "Am I really living the way that I want to live?" Many individuals are no longer satisfied with working for a living but instead want to work at living. Career development theory and practices that foster the development of meaning in work are reviewed in this digest.

This Digest reviews the literature on CTE's (Career and Technical Education) role in providing entrepreneurship education, including the behaviors and skills that contribute to entrepreneurial success, curriculum components and delivery strategies that have proven to be effective, and networking opportunities that offer students support they need to start their own businesses.

The need for career development is enormous. High unemployment is a global problem ... There is agreement that the "old way" of "one job for life" is no longer a reality for most people. It is possible that, in the future, there will not be enough paid employment for all. Therefore, there is a need to build on, and extend what we have accomplished, in order to meet the challenges of the future.

Although employment can be an exciting challenge for many individuals, it can also be a tremendous source of stress. Consequently, as work makes more and more demands on time and energy, individuals are increasingly exposed to both the positive and negative aspects of employment. Three concepts are important to understanding this relationship: Stress is an interaction between individuals and any source of demand (stressor) within their environment.

A value conflict arises when one value can only be realized at the expense of another value. For example, an artist might believe that commercial art provides security, but little creativity. By contrast, independent artists lack security, yet enjoy opportunities for creativity. Across the artist's range of options, realizing one value seems to require foregoing another value. In stronger cases of conflict, a person's whole set of values can be divided into groups that clash with one another. In weaker cases, conflict might be limited to a few values. This digest describes the scope of career value conflict, its developmental significance, and some strategies of conflict resolution.

Creating Self-Portraits is an individual and/or group career development tool designed to assess without testing. Creating Self-Portraits is a simple method that assists clients to examine themselves from four aspects: (1) Meaning: values, beliefs, interests, and barriers to meaning (2) Outcomes: the components of a dream or future vision (3) Activities: including preferred, past, and needed (4) Tools/techniques: including skills, knowledge, personal characteristics, and attitudes.

Some experts were asked to spend a day together, summarized what they knew about career development in five pithy messages. These messages would be used to promote career development in Canadian youth. What resulted is the "High Five" of career development: (1) Change is constant (2) Follow your heart (3) Focus on the journey (4) Stay learning and (5) Be an ally.

A number of factors and trends contribute to an increase in older adults in the workforce including demographics, financial concerns, changing concepts of retirement, longer and healthier life spans, and demand for the knowledge and skills possessed by the current generation of older workers. Once thought to be linear in nature with a natural progression 'up the ladder,' careers are now considered to be much more fluid, nonlinear, and unstable.

A number of factors have converged to create a new type of worker known as free agent. Downsizing by corporations during the 1980s and early 1990s signaled the end of an era where loyalty to an organization or corporation paid off in a lifetime guarantee of employment. Technology has created opportunities for work to be done differently, including virtually. The transition to the knowledge-based economy has generated a demand for workers with certain types of skills; workers possessing such skills are in short supply now and in the foreseeable future. These factors have served as a catalyst for the emergence of workers who consider themselves free agents. Because free agent workers do not usually have long-term attachments to one organization, their needs for career development must be met in nontraditional ways.