INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH EDUCATION IN COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION AMONG HEALTHY OLDER ADULTS

An innovative gerontology education program was developed to advance research on aging that is interdisciplinary and promotes the translation of knowledge from lab to life. The program focuses on communication and social interaction in healthy aging. It brings together faculty mentors, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows from six different postsecondary institutions in Canada. The program unifies basic laboratory research in hearing, vision, and cognition with applied research in audiology, biomedical engineering, optometry, psychology, speech-language pathology, human factors, and social work. The design, implementation, and evaluation of the first year of the program are described and future directions are suggested.     

Teacher learning in the context of educational innovation: Learning activities and learning outcomes of experienced teachers

This longitudinal study was aimed at increasing our understanding of how teachers learn. It was conducted within a national innovation programme in secondary education. During one year 94 teachers reported six learning experiences using digital logs. The learning experiences were content-analysed in terms of learning activities and learning outcomes. The former comprised six main categories, namely experimenting, considering own practice, getting ideas from others, experiencing friction, struggling not to revert to old ways, and avoiding learning—the first two categories being reported most frequently. Reported learning outcomes referred to changes in knowledge and beliefs, emotions, practices, and intentions for practice, with changes in knowledge and beliefs being reported most frequently and changes in teaching practices being reported rarely. Learning activities were associated significantly with all measures of learning outcomes. Type of learning environment was significantly associated with learning activities and learning outcomes. Results are discussed with respect to ways of fostering teacher learning.