TRANSITION,LOSS, AND GROWTH: PROCESSES OF POSITIVE ADAPTATION

Positive adaptation to the transition events of later life is a neglected area in the literature of gerontology and educational gerontology. Drawing on the literature of social and clinical psychology, gerontology, adult development, and adult education, as well as on original research findings, this paper formulates a model for viewing the transitions and losses of the aging process as opportunities for growth and self‐enhancement. Major categories of social‐psychological transition events are reviewed; the social‐psychological resources that aging individuals bring to these events are summarized; and three processes of adaptation to transition (grieving, stress management, and learning) are discussed in terms of their relevance to the problem. The usefulness of reflective learning as an adaptive strategy particularly appropriate to the later third of life is emphasized. Implications for further research and applications to practice are presented.     

Short-term memory,phonological processing,and reading ability

Verbal short-term memory deficits are a common characteristic of children with reading problems and may markedly increase the difficulty of learning to read. Previous work suggests that the basis of the short-term memory deficit may involve limitations in phonetic coding. In the present paper, a series of experiments are reviewed which examined the role of phonological processes in short-term memory. First, a developmental study is described in which a significant relationship was found between phonetic processes and verbal memory span, but not between phonetic processes and nonverbal memory. Second, additional studies are reviewed which collectively found that children with reading problems are less accurate at phonetic encoding than are good readers, and that performance on phonetic processing corresponds with verbal memory span. No reading group differences were obtained on nonverbal perception or memory tasks. These findings suggest that both developmental and individual differences in verbal memory span are related to the efficiency of phonological processes. Practical implications of current cognitive research are discussed. The research was supported by NIH Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.     

A conceptual framework for developing an activity-based approach to career counselling

The present paper develops a conceptual framework for an activity-based approach to career counselling. The main objective of this approach is to combine clients' practical activity, such as visits to educational institutions, work practices etc., with their psychological processes leading to occupational choice. Some basic ideas that are relevant to developing an activity-based approach to counselling in postmodern work life and some recent changes in work life itself and in the individuals' relation to work are discussed. These include plasticity, which emphasizes the individuals' capability and activeness in shaping both their working environment and themselves; the nonnormative nature of the developmental tasks that postmodern work life sets for the individual; the openness and nonlinear nature of the counselling process and the implications of this on the role of the counsellor; and the usefulness of conceptualizing the counselling process as a metaphorical reality. Also, some preliminary findings from a research project aimed at developing a counselling process model which is congruent with activity-based approach are presented. The implications of these findings on the framework are also discussed.     

Understanding and Theorizing the Role of Culture in the Conceptualizations of Successful Aging and Lifelong Learning

Successful aging and lifelong learning are value-laden concepts that are culturally determined. To this effect, people with different value systems and cultural backgrounds may perceive and understand these two concepts differently, resulting in different definitions and conceptualizations by people in diverse cultural contexts. There have been studies of successful aging and lifelong learning that considered what role culture plays in these two constructs separately. However, there is a lack of research studying successful aging and lifelong learning alongside each other, using the same culturally relevant approach to examine the impact of culture on how these two constructs are understood and conceptualized. The aim of this paper is, therefore, two-fold. First, it will examine the concepts of successful aging and lifelong learning and consider the role that culture plays in the understanding of these two constructs. Second, it will present a culturally relevant theoretical framework to theorize and explain older people's own value systems and the predominant cultural values that have influenced their understandings and conceptualizations of what successful aging and lifelong learning mean to them in old age. Considering and examining the theoretical framework from the perspectives of elders themselves is necessary if we are to understand the ways in which culture shapes the experiences of aging and learning in later life.     

Towards a useful classification of learning objects

The learning object remains an ill-defined concept, despite numerous and extensive discussion in the literature. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a classification that potentially brings together various perspectives of what a learning object may be. Six unique types of learning objects are proposed and discussed: presentation, practice, simulation, conceptual models, information and contextual representation objects. The common characteristics of each are synthesized in a proposal that a learning object is best described as a representation designed to afford uses in different educational contexts. The classification of learning objects proposed could be useful as a framework for designers of digital resources and for those engaged in use of these resources in educational contexts. Examples of learning objects are available for preview at http://www.learnactivity.com/lo/     

关于老年教育价值的再思考

新时期我国老年教育经历了规模扩张之后开始迈向提质发展的新阶段,重新审视老年教育的价值观、发掘传统老年教育实践中存在的关键问题,对于老年教育迈向高质量发展阶段有着不可忽视的作用。分析传统老年教育的价值观发现,老年教育实践中根植着功能主义哲学的思想,老年人通常被当作一种持续衰老的社会负担,为老年人提供的教育多集中于身心健康与休闲娱乐类的资源,目的在于帮助老年人对抗衰老、为社会缓解赡养负担。在经济社会飞速发展的今天,老年人比以往具备更长的寿命、更健康的身心状况与更重要的社会价值,需要重塑一种“发展性”的价值观念,将老年阶段看作融合学习、生活、工作、社会交往多维一体的新型混合生命周期,通过更新老年教育的发展理念、完善老年教育的治理体系、强化老年教育的社会支持等方式,引发全社会对老年教育价值的重视,保障老年群体的权益,关注老年群体的终身发展。     

Teacher knowledge and initial teacher education in the English learning and skills sector

Recent reforms of initial teacher education (ITE) in the learning and skills sector (LSS) in England are standards based and emphasise subject specialism. The reforms are underpinned by objectivist epistemological assumptions which are incompatible with socio‐cultural theories of professional knowledge, and ignore the diverse teaching roles and contexts in the sector and wider systemic issues. A qualitative scoping study found that LSS in‐service trainee teachers drew on three types of knowledge resources, or clusters of ‘rules’ for practice, in their teaching: these were related to their subject/vocational area, generic teaching and learning processes and specific learners and groups. Trainees generated knowledge resources through participation in their workplace, ITE course and other social contexts, and from embedded and encoded workplace knowledge. Trainees’ beliefs, values and prior experiences were both a knowledge resource and influenced their engagement with knowledge generation activities. It is argued that using a knowledge resources perspective, which recognises how trainees generate knowledge and seeks to bridge gaps in their access to knowledge resources, would be more effective in supporting trainees’ development than the current reforms.     

Research on adult learning and memory: Retrospect and prospect

It is argued that whether the course of cognitive development is characterized by growth, stability, or decline is less a matter of “fact” than a matter of the metamodel on which the theories and data are based. Three historical shifts in basic research on adult learning and memory are reviewed. The associative approach, dominant until the late 1950s, is rooted in the mechanistic metamodel. Within this approach, learning and memory are seen as the formation and dissolution of stimulus-response bonds. The associative approach has projected an irreversible decrement view of aging and learning/memory performance. The information processing approach, dominant from the early 1960s until the present, is rooted in the organismic metamodel. Within this approach, learning and memory are governed by storage structures and control processes, and active processing on the part of the learner is emphasized. The information processing view has projected a decrement with a compensation view of aging and learning/memory performance. Finally, it is argued that a contextual approach is emerging in the present historical context. A contextual perspective appears to emphasize the activities of perceiving, comprehending, and remembering rather than encoding, storage, and retrieval. Acquisition is seen as involving the articulation of input with past experience which sets the boundary conditions for perceiving and comprehending the new material. This differentiation and integration are viewed as occurring within a hierarchy of levels which reflect wider and wider contexts. Remembering is seen as the reconstruction of previous events. Event reconstruction depends, in large measure, on the extent to which original events are differentiated from and integrated with past experience during acquisition. In addition, event reconstruction also depends on events occurring following acquisition. Such a contextual perspective on acquisition and remembering leads to several suggestions for examining these activities during adulthood including an emphasis on meaning, broad contexts, and multiple influences on cognitive development.     

Exploring ‘learning lives’: community,identity, literacy and meaning

This article explores the term ‘learning lives’ by reporting on three research projects conducted by members of the Oslo‐based research group TransActions. By stressing the term ‘learning lives’ within a range of social ‘educational’ contexts, the article aims to look at learning within and across different learning sites exploring the positioning and repositioning of learner identity across these different ‘locations’. We emphasise how the individual learner relates to other people and objects, drawing on deeper trajectories or narratives of the self as it exists within and outside the immediate learning contexts. We pay attention to processes occurring between people which we find significant for the individual's identity, literacy and learning. By doing so we hope to make explicit the mobilisation of resources within and across specific contexts, in the ‘learning lives’ of Norwegian youngsters.     

Understanding the ‘Lexia’ in dyslexia: A multidisciplinary team approach to learning disabilities

The historical roots of the IQ-achievement discrepancy definition of learning disability are discussed as a reference point for explaining why this definition came into being and why it is inadequate for dealing with the variety of learning and developmental disabilities that present in school settings. A proposal is offered and justified for defining learning disabilities on the basis of profiles for multiple developmental domains that affect learning. In this proposal, developmental dyslexia is differentiated from other learning disabilities. Developmental dyslexia is defined as uneven development (dissociation) between word reading and higher-level processes in the functional reading system. Dyslexics may struggle with word reading because of deficits in phonological processes, orthographic-phonological connections, and/or fluency (rate, automaticity, or executive coordination). The need for both national and international classification schemes for defining specific learning and developmental disabilities for the purposes of educational services and research is emphasized. Grant P50 33812-06 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development supported preparation of this article.     

Curriculum development for quantitative skills in degree programs: a cross-institutional study situated in the life sciences

Higher education policies are increasingly focused on graduate learning outcomes, which infer an emphasis on, and deep understanding of, curriculum development across degree programs. As disciplinary influences are known to shape teaching and learning activities, research situated in disciplinary contexts is useful to further an understanding of curriculum development. In the life sciences, several graduate learning outcomes are underpinned by quantitative skills or an ability to apply mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning. Drawing on data from a national teaching project in Australia that explored quantitative skills in the implemented curricula of 13 life sciences degree programs, this article presents four program-level curricular models that emerged from the analysis. The findings are interpreted through the lens of discipline-specific research and general curriculum design theories to further our understanding of curriculum development for graduate learning outcomes. Implications for future research and to guide curriculum development practices in higher education are discussed.     

Lifelong learning ecologies in online higher education: Students' engagement in the continuum between formal and informal learning

Lifelong learning opportunities are readily accessible through the hybridization of digital learning contexts—from formal to informal—in today's globally networked knowledge society. As such, expanded learning opportunities generate a continuum of learning contexts and experiences mediated through digital technology. Consequently, there is an urgent need to actively examine the interconnections and complex relations between what is learned in formal university scenarios and the everyday learning that happens outside of the classroom, particularly the informal learning that is afforded through expanded and emerging digital contexts. The current research problem illustrates that expanded and emerging professional development scenarios require new pedagogical designs for empowering lifelong learners to harness the affordances of the web across both formal and informal contexts and practices. This study outlines ways in which students shape their learning ecologies in virtual contexts to support formal academic learning in online higher education. The paper presents qualitative results from a larger mixed methods interpretive case study. The multicase and multisite study examines three fully online graduate programmes in Education and Digital Technology during the 2017–18 academic year, collecting data in the form of online programme documentation, student interviews and online participant observation. Purposeful and criterion sampling were used to select 13 participants across three sites in Spain, the UK and the USA. The study was underpinned by a lifelong learning ecologies theoretical perspective to analyse learning processes across a continuum of practices and contexts. Findings illustrate how students conceive of, as well as how they organize their learning ecologies through a unique configuration of activities, digital resources and networked social support, indicating that academic programmes and teachers have an essential role in empowering student learning ecologies across contexts, recognizing past trajectories and supporting the development of valued disciplinary practices and perspectives across a continuum of learning.     

EDUCATION IN LATER LIFE: THE CASE OF OLDER WOMEN

Although education is considered to positively affect the quality of life in old age and to be instrumental in helping older adults successfully negotiate later‐life transitions, educational programming has not addressed the particular challenges facing older women as they age. Women's economic, social, and personal resources are more vulnerable in old age due to gender‐related limitations experienced across their entire life span. The predominantly leisure‐oriented perspective that governs educational opportunities for the older adult does not significantly impact on the well‐being of the aging woman in acknowledging this imbalance in resources. By grounding educational objectives in a resource development paradigm, efforts can be made to enhance individual resources as well as to promote changes in the social relations of power, privileges, and opportunities upon which current access and allocation of resources are based.     

Art and Lifelong Learning

It is argued, through the example of art education seen from a broad cultural perspective, that the concept of lifelong learning implies common terms of reference for learning in all contexts in which learning takes place, especially in schools, colleges and universities. This implies a common approach to standards at all levels of formal educational provision. The disparity of school art and art in other learning contexts is discussed, and concepts of standards currently in use are examined and found to be highly problematic. The idea of practitioner referenced standards is introduced in relation to standards derived from educational theory and practice. In the case of art these are considered in terms of ‘what it is that artists do; what it means to engage with a work of art at first hand; what people have to say about artists and works of art; and what it means to engage in learning’. Ways of relating these standards to each other and to lifelong learning in the context of a research rationale for an art curriculum are put forward. In conclusion, it is suggested that co-ordination of the current review of the National Curriculum and the developmental work on standards currently being undertaken by the QAA would represent a basis for the establishment of appropriate standards for lifelong learning, although this would require a new level of co-operation between the relevant educational sectors. Such standards would assist in reducing the possibility that lifelong learning could develop as a further isolated and self-justifying educational sector in a divided national educational system. They would also provide an opportunity for post-modern thinking to make a worthwhile contribution to educational debate.     

Parts of the Whole: Motor and Behavioral Skills in Self-Regulation and Schooling Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Primary education is compulsory around the world. This means that around age 5 or 6, millions of children worldwide transition from home or preschool/kindergarten settings into primary school, with the success of this transition shaping school and life trajectories for years to come. Both developmental and environmental factors during early childhood spur tremendous change in children’s executive function (EF), a multi-component process fundamental to self-regulation and overall achievement. Successful self-regulation means that children can master their attention, emotions, and behaviors as they navigate public social spaces including the classroom and playground. Adaptive development of EF and self-regulation are critical, because primary school comes with heightened expectations for children to manage themselves effectively. In this special section of 4 articles that collectively span preschool through 5th grade, we take an integrative, whole-child approach to studying children’s regulatory processes and schooling outcomes. Special section authors explored conceptual frameworks, measurement approaches, and empirical research on the motor and behavioral aspects of self-regulation and their contributions to educational outcomes. Article themes include the importance of precise and nuanced measurement of regulatory processes in addition to academic skills; in-school and out-of-school time as unique contexts for development; multiple interrelated developmental domains important for EF and self-regulation, including visuo-spatial and visuo-motor skills; and the need to synthesize research on EF and self-regulation across developmental domains for efficacious application and interventions. In taking an integrative, whole-child approach to the study of self-regulation and schooling outcomes, these articles represent research that are important parts of the whole.     

To learn and to construct knowledge in the context of work with adult education: a Portuguese case study

Work contexts are frequently referred to as spaces of learning and production of individual and/or collective knowledge. In such contexts specific dynamics are developed which cause the processes of learning and of knowledge production to have particularities. This paper aims at accounting for some dynamics that are associated with those processes, based on the main results of an ethnographic study on the adult educator team of a Portuguese local development association. The research identified ways of working/action rules based on the learning and knowledge production processes in the association. Mutual help, the reformulation and collectivization of practice, reflection in and about the action, and the negotiation of meaning about the practice are some of the mechanisms identified. The study also highlights how those dynamics of knowledge and learning and ways of doing may contribute to a practice which is closer to the needs of the adults to whom this team offers its education and training services.     

BEYOND SURVIVAL: CURRICULUM MODELS FOR SENIOR ADULT EDUCATION

This article presents a model curriculum in human development for home companions caring for older adult clients in the home care setting. This curriculum is designed to connect cognitive and affective learning by relating stage developmental tasks, as discovered by the home companions through the curriculum, to those experienced throughout life by their clients. Techniques that promote growth and development of both companion and client are explored with a focus on psychosocial dilemmas and constraints imposed by the aging process. The key concepts of life review, long‐term memory within a reminiscence framework, locus of control, autonomy, and relational aspects are addressed from a developmental perspective.     

Learning difficulties and social class: exploring the intersection through family narratives

This article is concerned with the intersection between learning difficulties and social class. It also inevitably tells of the gender‐class interface in relation to women’s caring roles. I use the life story narratives of three mothers and a grandmother of a person with learning difficulties, together with concepts from Bourdieu, to explore the ways in which class‐related capital and habitus affect their life experiences and their interactions with educational and other professionals. The data are the stories of (grand)mothers reflecting on life events, particularly in relation to decision making surrounding education, while simultaneously providing subtle, rich pictures of their socio‐economic contexts. I illustrate how privilege and disadvantage are reproduced partly for the families through their institutional interactions, which are differentiated according to economic and social resources. The stories re‐presented in this paper provide powerful examples of how experiences of living with learning difficulties and disabilities are situated in one’s class position and how struggles for inclusion are at once common and particular.     

Investigating social networks of older Singaporean learners: a mixed methods approach

ABSTRACT

Lifelong learning is regarded as an important channel in promoting active engagement in later life for aging societies. While most studies depict older learners as a group resilient to engaging in lifelong learning, few have addressed the impacts of their social networks on their participation. Drawing on the nationwide lifelong learning program in Singapore, the study explores the extent older Singaporean adults’ social networks influence their involvement in learning courses and illustrates how those networks matter to their motivations. A mixed methods approach consisting of two network instruments (Name Generator and Position Generator) and in-depth interviews based on 30 older Singaporeans (between 50 and 79 years old) were employed. The findings demonstrated that primary family members (spouse and children) were key discussants for older learners, but the narratives showed only children were key supporters. For female learners, husbands’ support could be limited. Such a gender difference was revealed in overlap networks among couples, with male learners receiving greater positive support from their wives. Furthermore, the results showed that single or widowed learners had more non-kin members and diverse network resources, which reflect in their discourses of being highly motivated and active in spreading news of courses. To conclude, the study delivered deeper understandings of how diverse social contexts influence older learners’ motivations. Future research shall continue to focus on variations of network characteristics and network resources to improve the understanding of how significant others and accessible network resources provide social support or opportunities for older learners.     

Co-construction of knowledge in tertiary online settings: an ecology of resources perspective

Tertiary education has seen a shift toward pedagogies that make use of social interaction. As part of the shift, teachers have considered re-framing their role in the teaching process, and giving more attention to ways in which knowledge construction amongst students can be supported. While many online technologies are well positioned to support interactivity between students, the use of these tools does not necessarily ensure that the social interaction is of a type that guarantees learning will take place. This paper employs an “ecology of resources” perspective (Luckin 10.1016/j.compedu.2007.09.018, 2008) to explore the experiences of teachers and selected students from three tertiary-level contexts as they engaged with interactive learning tasks mediated by asynchronous online technologies. The data presented in the study were generated primarily from accounts and semi-structured interviews, and presented teachers’ beliefs about how the learners could operate as knowledge resources for each other, while they themselves were somewhat ‘epistemically distant’. In contrast, the data suggest that the experiences of students and tutors were vastly different. The students represented themselves and others as inadequate resources, perceiving that the expertise to construct knowledge was not present in the student group. These observations highlight the importance of building resource-rich learning environments, enabling access to expert performances through blended settings, and nurturing a perception of capability between students.