Participation in learning and wellbeing among older adults

The objective of this research was to identify the effects of participation in learning on the subjective wellbeing of older adults. Data were from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a large-scale, nationally representative survey of those aged 50 and above. The survey contains several wellbeing measures and information on three types of learning: formal courses, music/arts/evening classes and gym/exercise classes. Multiple regression analyses were applied to the change in wellbeing outcomes between two survey waves. The key finding was that music, arts and evening classes were significantly associated with changes in each of the measures of subjective wellbeing. Formal courses and gym/exercise classes were not significantly associated with wellbeing, after controlling for other factors.     

Media education for older people - views of stakeholders

ABSTRACT

This study is a part of an ongoing design-based research (DBR) project aimed at designing, piloting, and assessing a digital study module focused on older people’s media education. In order to gain a better understanding of older people’s media literacy and develop the teaching of adult educators, participatory creative workshops for a total of thirty-one stakeholders (older people and professionals who work with them) were conducted. Research data was collected from these workshops through a case exercise from stakeholders and a questionnaire from older people during the year 2019. According to the stakeholders, older people need more training in all the dimensions of media literacy, which is understood as competence in accessing, using, understanding, creating, and critically analyzing different media texts. However, use dimension was the most featured dimension in the data. In addition, older people are a heterogeneous group and it is essential that media education is tailored to meet the current needs of older people. The results indicate that media education should be designed especially to address the needs and individuality of older people.     

Interdisciplinary team education promotes innovations in the home care of older people

This article describes a new type of team training that involves undergraduate students of medicine, students from the Aalto University (industrial engineering and management, architecture, information networks, collaborative and industrial design and bioinformation technology) and specialized home care nurses. During the course, the students learned interdisciplinary teamwork and created innovations in the care of older people. The 18 participants formed six microteams (three persons in each team: one specialized nurse, one medical student and one from Aalto University). The course consisted of two seminars and 3 full days of home visits to older people’s homes. Participants were encouraged to make one innovation in each home visit that would improve the older person’s well-being or streamline the processes of home care. During the course, the participants promptly formed tight teams. They valued the know-how of the other team members and learned openly from each other. They also created a number of practical innovations in home care which they presented to executives of older people’s care in a final seminar. The course received very good feedback from the students.

This course is an encouraging example of how gerontological interdisciplinary team training may be successfully applied. The article describes both the learning outcomes and the innovations the students produced during their home visits. It also discusses the learning theories behind effective interdisciplinary team learning.     

ICT,education and older people in Australia: A socio-technical analysis

People over 65 (or older people) are a growing proportion of the population in many developed countries including Australia. In the last 10 to 12 years interest from this group in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Internet has also grown considerably. ICT has much to offer older people as a means of keeping in touch with family, perhaps in other parts of the world, to obtain information about health and financial matters, for entertainment and to further their education. It also offers possibilities for intergenerational cooperation with, for example, children coaching their grandparents. This paper concentrates on older people’s use of ICT for education, some of this being formal but mostly informal, and adopts a socio-technical framework based on actor-network theory (ANT) to investigate this.     

发展现代远程教育在我国国民素质教育改革中的战略地位

文章从三个方面探讨现代远程教育在我国国民素质教育中的战略地位．分析探讨了现代远程教育的现状和存在的一些问题,提出了进一步发展现代远程教育在促进我国国民素质教育的改革．对终身学习教育体系的构建起到的重要作用,并提出建议和措施。     

Folklore as an instrument of education among the Chewa people of Zambia

This article considers the folklore of the Chewa people of Zambia as an instrument of education. It suggests that there is only a fine distinction between Chewa culture [mwambo wa a Chewa] and Chewa education [maphunziro ya Uchewa]. The former comprises tribal “truths” to be imposed on the minds of the younger generation. The latter comprises stages in the development of the young through training and some formalised learning. However, by and large, the former dominates the latter. The strongest features of an African Indigenous Knowledge System (AIKS) such as that of the Chewa people are best expressed in terms of Jakayo Peter Ocitti’s five philosophical principles of African indigenous education, namely preparationism, functionalism, communalism, perennialism and holisticism. They build on one another and are, therefore, related. The authors of this article demonstrate how Chewa culture and education use folklore to influence the minds of the young. They give examples of how various components of Chewa folklore are used to criticise, commend, dislike, admire, discard and adapt various traits in people. This paper does not present folklore as an educational panacea; there are weaknesses in Chewa traditional education which are also discussed. Rather, folklore is considered here as a valuable supplementary element in education. What the authors propose is to integrate folklore and informal learning as practised by the community in the formal curriculum to enhance the quality of the education provided for all and to maintain cultural identity.     

The role of part-time employment among young people with a non-university education in Spain

For some people, a part-time job is merely an intermediate state that serves as a stepping stone to further employment and makes labour market integration easier. Yet, part-time work also appears in highly unstable careers. The present research aims to determine the role of part-time employment for young people with non-university studies. Using the Survey on Transition from Education/Training and Labour Market Integration (ETEFIL-2005), we build the monthly sequence of labour states for young people from when they finish their non-university studies until the time of the survey. The analysis allows us to conclude that part-time work is fairly atypical in the early stages of a career but that those who have part-time jobs spend quite a long time in them. In addition, we identify several patterns in the use of part-time work, the ‘integrative’ pattern proving to be the most prevalent. Factors such as education and early preferences are seen to have a major impact on career paths.     

论教育为人民服务

把为人民服务写进教育方针,是党的教育方针的新发展,是“三个代表”重要思想在教育领域的体现和落实。教育要把为人民服务作为根本方向和出发点;教育要满足人民的需要,促进人的全面发展。在高等教育中实践为人民服务,要充分认识高等教育的战略地位,增强责任感和使命感;努力提高教育质量和办学效益,为人民群众提供更多、更好的教育;强化服务观念,为大学生成才创造条件。     

Technophobia among older Internet users

Internet use may be helpful in maintaining older adults’ independence, social connectedness, and quality of life. High levels of technophobia (fear of modern technologies or discomfort with them), however, may constrain older Internet users’ online activity and limit the benefits they derive therefrom. The literature on technophobia in later life tends to focus on nonusers and ignore older individuals who already use advanced technologies. Relying on an online survey of 537 Internet users aged 60 and up, this study explored the extent to which technophobia constrains older users’ online activity. The results demonstrated varying levels of technophobia among users and significant associations between technophobia and Internet use patterns, including type and complexity of use. Technophobia also correlated with users’ education, perceived health and well-being: Technophobes tended to be less satisfied with their lives—a correlation that remained significant even after controlling for background variables and online activities. The findings suggest that technophobia plays a role at both the first and second levels of the digital divide among seniors. They also indicate that technophobia may be a risk factor in later life, suggesting that older users ought to be taken into account in planning measures to reduce technophobia among seniors.     

From friendly to rebel grannies and psycho older men: views on aging and old people among Romanian children

ABSTRACT

The article analyses children’s views on aging in the context of social changes in Romania. Data from drawings and interviews conducted with 120 middle school children (75 girls and 45 boys) aged from 11 to 14 years, illustrate how views on aging and old people reflect cultural notions of aging and older individuals. Findings point out a mixture of positive views, imported from an international positive aging discourse and negative views that reflect the Romanian social reality of aging. Gender stereotypes also seem to impact how older people are perceived. Findings are critically discussed in relation to how social realities foster the maintenance and change of cultural views on aging and what kind of educational interventions should be developed.     

British higher education and its older clients

The older clients of the British highereducation system are both extremely numerousand extremely diverse. In this paper we drawupon the results of a national survey ofgraduates to show how this diversity in termsof age and mode of study, and by implication interms of motivation, gender and subject ofstudy, directly impacts upon the types ofoutcome measurements that are appropriate andupon the levels of outcome that are achieved.     

Participation and equity towards a sociology of policy language in education

The problem of making education policies explicit and context independent is addressed in this paper. As a vehicle for discussion the paper examines a contemporary policy that has major shortcomings in the explicitness of its language: Australia’s “Participation and Equity Program”, a policy directed at increasing access to education by post-compulsory level students. Problems in making policies explicit and context independent are discussed. Policies are seen as complex messages whose meanings can become scrambled for implementers remote from the language community of policy framers. The links between speech communities and the limited contexts of policies are examined. The paper suggests the inauguration of a sociology of policy language in education to assist in policy design and dissemination. Its concluding sections recommend the kinds of applied work that that sub-discipline might engage in and strategies for improving the explicitness of policy language generally.