GERONTOLOGICAL EDUCATION: PROPOSITIONS FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Higher education has not properly responded to employment needs in the field of aging. This paper suggests that any endeavor to infuse a gerontological component in the curricula of colleges and universities should take into account four basic propositions: the policy adjustments to the demographic “aging” of our society; the phenomenological reappraisal of an extended individual life cycle; the social‐experimental quality of new gerontological social policies; and the emerging concern for ecological determinants of human behavior, as a means for generating alternatives to institutionalization. Employment needs and projections are related to the increasing demand for short‐term training programs and the emerging interest in lifetime learning approaches to adult education.