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Finding meaning in work and developing career competencies needed for professional success has aquired increased interest in the last decades. The most important task in emerging adults became finding a calling in their career that is essential for adaptability and career self-management. This study examined the relation between calling, career adaptability and career competencies among 458 Romanian university students. The mediation role of career adaptability on the relation between calling and career competencies was tested. The relation between calling and career competencies was partially mediated by career adaptability. Implications for further research and emerging adults’ career counseling are discussed.

Emerging adulthood is a challenging period in terms of identity development, especially in the education and career domains. In the present paper we employed a person-centered approach of identity processes to identify pre-service teachers’ educational identity statuses. As beliefs about teaching influence teachers’ engagement in professional development tasks, we explored connections between their beliefs about teaching ability (innate versus learned) and educational identity status. Results indicated that most pre-service teachers in our sample were characterized by identity achievement, followed by searching moratorium, diffusion, and foreclosure. Searching moratorium pre-service teachers scored higher than the foreclosed ones on both teaching ability beliefs.

In the competitive employment markets of the XXIst century, one of the most important and influential tasks in emerging adults is to develop a fulfilling career, which implies identifying a calling in their career. Aiming to explore calling in career, this study presents the frequency of perceiving a calling in career, the intergroup variations on calling regarding age, gender and field of study and the relation between the perception of calling in career and living calling on a sample of 497 Romanian undergraduate students. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Eating is an essential part of our lives, but its moral implications are rarely investigated. The present paper reviews current psychological trends regarding this topic. Existing academic literature and its implications for future research are discussed. The first part of the review concerns the macro level of analysis, looking at humans’ symbolic relationship with food throughout history. The second part focuses on the individual level of analysis, referring to current psychological investigations, currently focused on three key domains: moral decision-making strategies and adaptations, gender as a moral choice moderator, and social and personality correlates.

Studies addressing resilience often relied on quantitative measurements with participants who faced significant adversity. In the last two decades, the concept of resilience started to be approached also in a non-traumatic context. There is a gap in the literature regarding the operationalisation and the instruments used to assess the construct. The purpose of the study was to develop a contextually relevant measure of youth resilience: Youth Resilience Measure (YRM). Both quantitative and qualitative stages of its development ensured that YRM has good construct validity and reliability. Results offer an integrative image of perceived competences used by individuals to overcome problematic situations.

The scientific literature clearly reveals the growing incidence of the children's emotional and behavioural problems. The current paper investigates the prevalence of the socially and emotionally related problems in a Romanian sample of 1292 children, from low-budget families, studying in schools from disadvantaged communities. The children, aged 7 to 11, were assessed using ASEBA and SSRS self-reported questionnaires. Statistical analysis revealed a high incidence of social problems (21%), internalising (17,1%) and externalising (13,7%) problems, with a significant difference between boys and girls (F(4, 424) = 6.58, p< .01). Strategies to prevent these problems in the school environment are discussed.

Didactic expertise has become a key priority for many contemporary universities. The present study sets out to provide a comparative analysis between expert and veteran (at least 5 years of professional experience and low performance) university teachers. Three research questions guided the present study and two case studies (expert/veteran) were conducted in multilevel analyses: behavioural, cognitive and metacognitive. The qualitative methods were mixed with quantitative ones. The outputs revealed that didactic expertise is conditioned by the acquisition of efficient teaching strategies associated with combatting erroneous personal theories of teaching and accompanied by constant reflection over one's own teaching activity.

Recent scientific papers proved that irrational beliefs appear to be related to internalized and externalized emotional and behavioral problems (Silverman & DiGiuseppe, 2001). Looking for pertinent solutions in the present study we assumed to demonstrate that SELF KIT program (Social-Emotional Learning Facilitator) is efficient in developing social and emotional competencies (SEC) in kindergarten children. A 3x2 factorial design (intervention type vs. team expertise) was applied. Working with preschool children (223) a 12 weeks intervention program was implemented. Our results, computing by MANOVA, showed that SELF kit had a really impact on SEC (p<.05). Future directions and implications are discussed.