Approaches to teaching adult development within a life span development course

In teaching life span development courses, instructors must help students u nderstand how general principles guide development in adulthood as well as in childhood. In this article, we describe two exercises that convey the wa ys in which social biases influence adult development and aging. The first exercise, involving sorting pictures of people of different ages, illustrat es the diversity of opinions about how to divide the life span. The second exercise demonstrates how physical and social factors shape individual well -being in old age just as they do in childhood.