The Motivation Theory of Life-Span Development and Its Implications for Career Education

Abstract

Based on the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) and control model, the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development (MTLSD) proposes adaptive development criteria and objectives. It asserts that the pursuit of perpetual development is the primary control and that the life cycle is an action field with an opportunity and constraint structure of time organization. Opportunity is a process characterized by the change processes of escalating and waning and by the adaptation consistency processes of goal participation and goal separation. The MTLSD has endeavored to elucidate how people actively promote their own personal lifelong development throughout its entirety. This provides illumination for China’s career education. The importance of individual initiative in career development, the process of opportunity in the continuity of career education, the difference of career education in different career (major) life cycles, and the fairness of career education during the transitional period of social mobility (opportunity) must be emphasized.