Methods in seniors education today: what do we need? Professor Dr. Keith Percy, Lancaster University, UK.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour to be here at this conference at the University of Ulm and to be given the opportunity to speak to you. The title of this talk has gone through several changes and I have to confess to you that I am not sure, even now, if its intentions are absolutely clear. I do not want you to expect that I shall take the promise of the title - what do we need - literally and offer you a shopping list of new and old learning and teaching methods for the future. We can all produce lists but it is not clear that they have much value unless we attach to them an analysis of what is politically, culturally and financially possible. That would take much longer than the twenty minutes which are available for this presentation. Instead, I want to stand back a little and to reflect on what we are talking about in this conference, in particular, what are the constructs, assumptions and ideas which may be taken- forgranted by us in relation to methods. By the way, when the first draft of this talk was written, it became apparent that a range of other nouns were naturally being used as synonyms for the noun seniors older adults, older people, later-life learners, third agers and more. That seemed undesirable so the term older people was adopted as standard. In English this is the most neutral the least value-laden - term. The talk has three parts: 1) Some introductory reminders about the imprecise and generalised way in which we speak about older people and learning 2) A discussion of six propositions concerning teaching and learning methods which we may think older people need 3) A conclusion that, in the field of older peoples learning, we should distinguish between our vision and the methods that we think will bring about that vision Part 1. There has been a great deal of literature published in the last thirty or forty years on the learning and teaching of older people. What much of it seems to disregard is the obvious heterogeneity of older people. There are few statements which we can make with validity and truth which can begin as to their teaching and learning, older people shouldor.. older people do or older people prefer. Or with regard to their teaching and learning, older people need Perhaps some older people. But not all of them. There are so many older people. They are everybody who happens to have lived beyond a certain age. They will differ in terms of age, gender, social class, educational and employment background, income, nationality, culture, religion, health, values, learning interests and so on. Any one of these factors might affect what older people want to learn, their readiness to learn and the methods through which they can learn effectively. So, universal statements about older people and learning are difficult to make.

The other introductory comment is to note a fascination with the way in which we do talk about older people and learning and the ways in which our vocabulary shifts over time and, more importantly, the content of what we regard as important shifts. We shall not dwell here on the way in which we talk about learning and education almost interchangeably and the manner in which, twenty years ago, we talked quite happily about educational gerontology and gerogogy but have now slid imperceptibly into using softer terms such as learning in later life or later-life learning. Think rather about, for example, the growing dominance over the past decade of policy argument and research activities connected to the wider benefits of learning and of the way later-life learning has become part of the discussion. Thus, in this dominant paradigm, learning for older people is justified not intrinsically as a good in itself but in terms of its possible other benefits connected to health, longevity of life and savings on the health budget. There is nothing wrong with this but you need to be conscious of what is occurring and be aware of the connection with political, administrative and financial priorities. You could do a similar analysis of the current talk of active ageing, of the need for older people to lead active lives. There is nothing wrong with this kind of talk; it makes a lot of sense. But you need to ask if the terminology is sufficient. What is omitted? If older people are not able, or choose not, to be active do we blame or penalise them? Hopefully not. If they do age actively is their future secure? Not necessarily. An active older person will not necessarily escape the economic, societal and political constraints which control the way they live out their lives. Part 2 The second part of this talk addresses directly the question of what claims and assumptions are in fact made about the learning and teaching methods needed for older people. It focuses on six, although there are several more with which could be dealt with if there were time. In these claims and assumptions we are asking if there is anything about being older, compared to being younger, which mean that particular learning and teaching methods or approaches are needed. We leave aside, for the moment, the question of when does one become older, having ceased to be younger. Do older, compared to younger, people need methods of teaching and learning that: 1) fit their age? This statement seems close to being self-evident, a tautology. There will clearly be physical aspects of older age that affect learning and should be borne in mind by a teacher, which might include a teacher teaching at a distance. It is not necessary to detail the obvious, but factors connected to sight, hearing, physical conditions, illnesses, perhaps concentration spans experienced variously by older people - will be among them. Memory is a most interesting issue here. There is a great deal of detailed research about the effects of ageing upon memory and some of these may require adjustment in teaching and learning methods. The Memory literature seems to suggest, additionally, that almost as important as the effects of ageing upon memory are the beliefs, often negative, which older people have about their memories. Thus believing, perhaps falsely, that you have a poor memory can inhibit, or even prevent, your learning. This is clearly a factor which a good teacher, or preparer of learning materials, would want to take into consideration and wish to counteract .

2) are social, interactive, inter-personal It is a common piece of received wisdom that a major benefit of learning for older people is that they leave their homes, go to a place where other people are, and meet and interact with them in a class or learning situation. This is active learning; it is an aspect of social inclusion, it is characterised as an antidote to social isolation and as a significant contribution to mental health. There is much anecdotal self-reported material from older people to illustrate this benefit and a significant body of research, again mainly based on self-report by older people, to confirm it. So this is an important proposition. An obvious comment is, of course, that social situations, not describing themselves as connected to learning and teaching, can and are organised which will presumably bring the same benefits for older people who participate. However, it must be unwise to argue that all learning by older people needs to be in the presence, the physical presence, of other people. Older people can also learn alone; they can learn at a distance; they can learn through ICT- enabled networks (and this, in a different way, is social) as our colleagues here at Ulm have demonstrated. 3) are peer-based, not didactic, The British U3A, the University of the Third Age, has grown up since the 1980s with a particular ideology. It is that older people have passed beyond the age, and the stages in life, when they want an expert to stand in front of them and to transmit knowledge to them as passive learners. The ideology maintains that a group of U3A members, experienced people and motivated learners, can function as a learning community and teach each other. Some will know more and help the others; some will take turns to prepare so that they can pass on their knowledge to others. In a research study into a British U3A group published in the International Journal of Education and Ageing last year (Marsden, 2011) one member said If you have one person speaking for the whole time, you dont learn very much from each otherPeople have had enough of formal learning but they still want to go on learning and sharing what each other learned over the years

This research study showed, however, a difference between this kind of statement and what actually occurred in the University of the Third Age group. The author identified four different kinds of learning situation, four different kinds of teaching and learning, in the U3A group researched, including formal didactic teaching. The truth was that among the 800 or so members, a variety of teaching and learning methods were both desired and made available by these older people. This variety of method is surely what is needed generally. 4) use their life-experience Findsen & Formosa (2012), write

The learning experience must take advantage of the extensive experiences of older learners This must be true. This approach must be a way of making learning immediately meaningful, of allowing older people to find examples in their own experience which exemplify or confirm what is being taught, and to compare with other members of a class how understanding of new knowledge can be achieved through reflection on what is already known and experienced. By definition older people have a longer life experience upon which to draw. It is also seems fruitful to consider notions that later life is the time when people might reflect upon, summarise and re-order their life experience and come to some conclusions about its value and meaning. Those who write about this process describe it is as both a learning activity and as therapeutic. However, two brief comments: 1) the claim that teaching should take account of the life experience of learners is true for all adult education, for all ages of adults, not just for those whom we describe as older. A thirty year old already has significant life experience which can be drawn into the process of learning. 2) We should not only generalise on this point but consider actual contexts, actual classrooms and actual subjects being learned. Take subjects such as astronomy, archaeology, mathematics. How is life experience to be drawn upon in teaching these subjects? There probably are answers but, again, if there are they apply equally to younger as to older people. 5) liberate them Over the past 20 - 25 years there has been a significant body of academics and thinkers concerned with later-life learning who, following Paolo Freire, think that teachers of older people should be concerned with their liberation. Essentially, Freire argued that we are all prisoners of the ideas, goals, concepts and standards which socialisation processes and schooling have made available to us and fed into us. The implication is that we accept the status quo, accept a society which is hierarchical with haves and have-nots - and people and groups who are disadvantaged, marginalised and oppressed (Freire, 1972). Among them are the large groups of older people, poor, ill, isolated, who can be categorised as among the oppressed. Over-simplified, perhaps, the argument from those influenced by Freirean thinking is that the teaching and learning of older people should help them to realise that they they are oppressed in their minds as well as in their lives. This would be the first step. An older person thus liberated and aware of his or her disadvantaged situation, the argument goes, is then more likely to seek to take action, to become involved in civil society, to seek to change things. The Freirean analysis is interesting. There is an essential truth that as we go through life we normally think within the thought-limits which our society constructs and it is a worthwhile goal of education to try to break out of that closed circle, if it is possible. However, I have myself, nevertheless, written criticising this analysis, mainly on the grounds that we should leave it to the individual to decide whether he or she should be liberated in the way described and also that, when you consider the classroom and subject learning level, it is difficult to see how you apply the Freirean approach in practice (Percy,1990).

However, the thinking behind this proposition stands as a useful corrective to all those who think that teaching older adults is a neutral, value-free, activity. 6) promote self-directed learning Clearly, teaching and learning of older people should particularly promote self-directed learning. By self-directed, or independent, learning, of course, we mean learning which the older person does on his or her own, without a teacher, through reading, internet, media, talking to other people or, really, any method that seems appropriate. Of course, selfdirected learning is important at any age and sufficient research has been done worldwide over the past 40 years to suggest that it is a very extensive form of adult learning. Why then, make the case particularly with regard to older people? Because 1) there is research, although its reliability is not certain, which does hint that older people are less likely to engage in self-directed learning than those younger. If this is true, we do not know the reasons for it but they are likely to be multiple and include lack of confidence in ability to learn successfully in this mode; lack of awareness of the teacher-less means of learning available; and a lack of educational background. 2) Secondly, self-directed learning should be promoted for its appropriateness for the situation of many older people. It can be cheap, it does not necessarily require travel and the learning resources available are potentially boundless. But, of course, it does not bring with it the benefits of peer and group based learning and it does not normally give access to an expert who can guide learning and supply expertise. Part 3 All of the six propositions about teaching and learning of older people are significant and all have at least some elements of truth and relevance which merit debate. As indicated, there are further propositions which could have presented in this paper and you will be able to think of others. The final section of this paper looks behind the propositions. Teaching and learning are second order processes in the sense that discussion of them often begs the questions of what is to be taught and what learned. It is fascinating that many discussions of later-life learning neglect the what that is to be learned in a specific case, almost as if it will not make a difference to an analysis. This is often because we do not necessarily want to talk only about teaching and learning in itself but rather about the higher order questions of what it can lead to. These questions will be of the nature of what should the life of older people be like, how should society treat older people, what should be changed, what kind of society do we want, what kind of world, what kind of people, what kind of older people? Thus, if you return to the six propositions in the central part of this talk, underlying them are beliefs, questions and aspirations about older people being active, older people being treated properly, older people being treated as peers and equals, older people being respected for their position in life and for their life experience, older people being liberated and older people making choices for themselves and being independent. And that is fine and that is good. What is not good is to think that they are only propositions about teaching and learning. Each proposition contains a vision.

Actually this conference is an excellent example. It is full of visions. Of course, intergenerational dialogue and ICT based networked learning, for example, can be discussed as methods of teaching and learning for older people. However, behind each of them is a larger vision of the kind of society and the kind of world to which we can aspire, if we wish to do so. One offers us a civil society in which different generations communicate with, learn from, value and depend upon each other for mutual benefit and societal harmony. The other suggests a new world of national and international communication in which the best of new learning technology is adapted to enable communication in which the historic barriers of time, cost and distance can be ignored and overcome. In each of these visions, older people are presented as key participants if they are able, and are willing, to experience new learning situations. For me, the most intriguing big vision to be discovered in this conference is that of the joining together of the Danube countries in an international sharing and understanding in which older people can play an important part. I speak as a British person, brought up in the context of nationalistic imperial pride, the island nation - state, rigidly timid about foreigners, about speaking foreign languages and the notion of being European. The vision of crossing national boundaries, exploring shared history, culture and life experience, promoting peace, prosperity, civic engagement and professional activity on an international basis is profound and exciting from this restricted perspective. The image of the great River Danube linking all of these aspects together is powerful and promises something significant. The inclusion of teaching and learning, particularly of older people, within this vision makes sense. However, let us always remember what is the vision and what are the means to bring about the vision; let us discriminate between the first and the second order questions. Then our discussions about methods in seniors education will be better founded and the outcomes will be what we need. References Findsen, B. & Formosa, M (2012) Lifelong learning in later life: a handbook on older adult learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Freire, P (1972) Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marsden, R (2012) A study of the co-operative learning model used by University of the Third Age in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Education and Ageing, 2, 1, 55-66. Percy, K. (1990) The future of educational gerontology: a second statement of first principles. In F. Glendenning & K. Percy (Eds.) Ageing, education and society: readings in educational gerontology. Keele, Staffordshire: Association for Educational Gerontology.