Older People as learners

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Older People as learners

• Jonathan Hughes
• Lecturer
• Centre for Widening Participation
• The Open University

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Older People as learners

• My research has been looking at the different
  ways older people are viewed as learners
• From perspectives of
• Government
• F.E. colleges
• Older people (themselves)

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Older People as Learners

• Government Perspective(s)
• Could be summed up as
• Older People? Learners?
• Policy on Lifelong Learning
• The Learning Age (Green Paper - 1998)
• Learning to Succeed (White Paper 1999)
• Learning and Skills Act - 2001

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Older People as Learners

• This process focuses on work
• Meeting employer need
• Making providers more relevant
• Urging learners to take responsibility to
  up-skill

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Older People as Learners

• Older People?
• (e.g. Winning the Generation Game -2000)
• Ignored as learners
• Attempt to re-define old age as later working
  life
• Problems to do with long life, welfare provision
  and pensions

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Older People as Learners

• 5 senior college managers interviewed
• Emergent themes
• Community
• Work
• Need

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Older People as Learners

• Community
• Separate
• Site of unmet need
• In need of support
• But needs investigation

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Older People as Learners

• Work
• Occasionally employment
• More often whats done in college

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Older People as Learners

• Need
• Deficits (out there)
• Passive needs of learners
• Active colleges? we need to

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Older People as Learners

• In neither of these views does the view point of
  older learners themselves figure
• So I ran 3 workshops between September 2003 and
  January 2004 involving some 75 people

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Older People as Learners

• So how do older people see themselves?
• For these groups, learning was about being well
  connected and well informed

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Older People as Learners

• To an extent accept ideas about older people
• Some people do not take easily to learning
  their brains are not as quick as they once were

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Older People as Learners

• The stress is on maintaining themselves
• To keep brain active to be able to converse with
  younger people to gain confidence to be able to
  go forward to have a go at anything
  achievement.

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Older People as Learners

• In this context active becomes central to the
  discourse that these older people were trying to
  create.
• It relates to maintaining social networks.
• And to staving off unwanted consequences of old
  age.

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Older People as Learners

• As a counter-discourse it reveals the weight of
  the discourse of old age as decline and
  usefulness.
• To an extent accepts this discourse.
• But also seeks to create a space where self
  esteem and respect can develop.

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Older People as Learners

• With a loss of work roles, respect becomes of
  critical importance.
• S But I think you do get respect because you say
  to them, and they go, Ooh, whos done that
  poster? And you go, Ive done that!
• B You go up in their estimate

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Older People as Learners

• So older people seek out learning not to acquire
  subject knowledge
• And definitely not to re-skill for paid work
• But rather, by using learning as a measure of
  activity, to stay healthy, maintain respect and
  develop social networks.

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Older People as Learners

• Male participant in workshop 3
• I reckon that the government wants us to die at
  64.
• Female participant
• And women to die at 59!