• (The)Korea Educational Review
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.147-172
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• 2018

This study aims to seek lifelong educational implications and supports for middle aged women who experience empty nest period. Empty nest period has gained limited attention in research even though it is an important period through which middle aged women review and re-evaluate their past life and prepare for their next. This study tries to understand how they experience the empty nest period and how it affects their life, and suggest lifelong educational implications. A total number of 10 middle aged women were interviewed. They were selected by the reason that they either have experienced or are currently in the empty nest period. The collected samples were analyzed by constant comparative method based on grounded theory and were named & categorized through sequential process of open coding, axis coding and selective coding. While story-telling the experiential process of empty nest period, this study found 2 main criteria, will of change and actualization, based on which 4 different types of middle aged women's experience were withdrawn. Those 4 types are self-seeking, role-adaptive, relationship-focused and change-unwillingly and each type was explained with its own characteristics. Based on study result, lifelong educational implications for middle aged women were suggested.