Older Adults, Learning & Curriculum Development

1. Older Adults, Learning & Curriculum Development A Psychological Perspective

2. Outline • Trends • Curriculum models • Cognitive perspective • Sociocultural perspective • An example: ICT for older adults

3. Trends • Increased from 720,000 (13%) in 1991 to 1,170,000 (18%) in 2001 • Changing family structures and responsibilities • Higher life expectancy • Early / involuntary retirement • Access to information (older adults 55-65) using personal computer has increased from around 1.2% to 13.8% between 2000 & 2002 • Mobility • Participation in society

4. Questions for Reflection • How would you characterise older adults? Describe these older adults to yourself? • How did you organise learning (curriculum?) for older adults? And why? Was it successful?

5. What is a curriculum? A curriculum is… •  Systematic learning of a specific subject • Established fields of knowledge •  Intended learning outcomes •  Useful subjects in this society • Means for personal improvement and development

6. Important Questions Basic components • What are its intentions? • What is the content? • What are the methods used to deliver it? • How is it assessed?

7. Important Questions Technical Aspects • How can we plan a curriculum? • How is it arranged? • Does it work and how can it be improved? Socio-political aspects • Who makes these decisions? • Are the decisions implemented? • What are the influences on the curriculum? • What are the future priorities?

8. Conceptions of Curriculum

9. Curriculum Model: Objective / Product Approach Ultimate Concerns: learning products Four main questions • What are the educational aims? (intentions) • Which educational experiences? (content) • How to organize educational experiences effectively (methods) • How to evaluate if the aims are achieved? (assessment)

10. Curriculum Model: Objective / Product Approach Characteristics: • Scientific / rational • Focusing on “how” (not what) • Specific & behavioral objectives (structural) • Evaluating curriculum with regard to objective achievement or learning products (behavioral changes) • Education=means • Learners=passive / Teachers=authoritative

11. Strengths & Weaknesses Strengths: • Rationality and logic • Providing a clear guide or blueprint (aims, experiences, outcomes, evaluation) • Can be assessed easily • Accountable • Easy to follow

12. Strengths & Weaknesses • Rigidity • Nature of Knowledge: Fixed? or Evolving? • Nature of knowledge acquisition: constructing? or imparting? • Differences in understanding among teachers (experiences, assumptions, values) • Separation of objectives and experiences (means-end)—experiences should be more valued by learners • Difficulties in claiming expertise (teachers are learners too) • Difficulties in specifying all the objectives • Dangerous in ignoring some important objectives (hidden values)

13. Alternative Model: Process Approach (Stenhouse) Ultimate Concerns: Learning Processes Characteristics ·    learning experiences are intrinsically valuable (not just a means) ·    knowledge & skills: not fixed, problematic & shifting ·    should focus on enquiry and exploration but not products

14. Characteristics: Process Model • content: key concepts & procedures (e.g. ‘causation’ in history; ‘experimentation’ in science) • Focus: classroom processes • Evaluation: subjective, qualitative comments • Learner=active, participating • Learners should participate in designing objectives • Focusing on needs, growth and development • Teachers’ roles: as facilitators, assistants, learners

15. Curriculum Model: Other Approaches Skilbeck’s Situation Approach: (main concerns: context and needs) • Situation analysis • Goal formulation • Programme building • Interpretation and implementation • Monitoring, feedback, assessment & reconstruction

16. Curriculum Model: Other Approaches Kemmis’ Action Research Model (evolving curriculum) •   Planning • Action • Observation • Reflection

17. Alternative approaches Strengths: • Flexible • Student-centred • Take important influences and factors into account • Address needs  Problems: • Hard to evaluate (esp. objective outcomes) • Unsystematic: Hard to manage • Lack directions: lack measurable or observable objectives • Require a lot of skills, attention and effort continuously

18. Why model? • Intention • Nature of knowledge • Assumptions about teaching & learning (behavoral, cognitive & sociocultural) • Reflective practitioners: no straight rules • Indeterminacy=norm • Objectives / experiences are problematic • Take into account of different values • Mind the pitfall: formalizing curriculum

19. Cognitive Perspective • Mental processes; internal states • Cognitions: Perceptions, thoughts, values, beliefs • Cognitive deficiency research

20. Cognitive Deficit / Ageing • Decline in learning capacity • Slow information processing • Limited short term memories • Cognitive load • Distraction • Low cognitive flexibility

21. Causes • Cognitive slowing • Sensory deficits • Diminished processing resources • Coordination abilities • Diseases

22. How would you characterize older adults from a cognitive perspective?

23. Cognitive Education • Focusing on declining cognitive needs or maintaining cognitive functioning (i.e. what they cannot do well by themselves) • Effective instruction to improve performance • Accommodative strategies

24. Accommodative Strategies • Specify actions required for completing a task • Arrange practice or repeated training • Build on their experiences • Build on their prior knowledge • Show the most important (no sidestepping) • Chunk the knowledge • Removed cognitive load (e.g. demonstration & worked examples) • Make them feel good, confident and accepted

25. Problems • Normal aging does not lead to simultaneously decline in all cognitive functions • For example: no age differences in terms of organization and the use of general world knowledge (Mayhorn, 2004) • Individual differences • Individualistic approach

26. Problematic Image • Conceptualising older adults as deficit • Adding conflicts—problematising identity • “Give and take”—but how much you can give? (stricken resources) • Cognitive deficit—limited learning support

27. Sociocultural perspective • Lev Vygotsky (Russian psychologist) • Learning is situated within specific sociocultural context • Learning is mediated by cultural tools (e.g. symbols, languages, signs etc) • Collaboration and interaction facilitate the appropriation of cultural tools • From interpsychological to intrapsychological; from other regulation to self-regulation

28. Key concepts • Zone of proximal development (ZPD) =the distance between actual development and the level that can be accomplished with guidance • Scaffolding • Interaction and collaboration

29. Sociocultural education • Embeddedness • Mediation • Interaction and collaboration • Cultural tools • Focus NOT on what one can or cannot do at the moment but what one can achieve on receiving assistance

30. Reflection • Your achievement? Or ASSISTED achievement • Your solution? Or COLLABORATIVE solution • Your performance? Or MEDIATED performance? • Your own goals? Or EMBEDDED goals

31. How would you characterise older adults from a sociocultural perspective?

32. Questions • What are their zone of proximal development (NOT what are their problems or what they cannot do) • How should assistance be organized? • How can collaboration and interaction be promoted? • What are the important cultural tools?

33. A Successful Case • SKH Western District Centre for the Elderly • Computing literacy program for older adults • Part of their Institute of Continuing Education for Senior Citizens • ICT as cultural tools

34. Aims and courses • To cope: The development of basic and essential computer skills that enhance older adults’ life skills (sample courses: basic computer skills); • To grow: The acquisition of computer knowledge and skills that meet their own interest (sample courses: web page design); • To contribute: The development of skills and knowledge that help them relate to others and contribute to their well being (sample courses: card design).

35. Statistics • Initial enrolment: about 20 older adults started a computer course in 1998 • Jumped to 609 in March1999 with the formal inception of the Institute of Continuing Education for Senior Citizens. • Further increased to about 2000 in the subsequent years (2100 in 2001; 1993 in 2002; and 2110 in 2003)

36. Interview Study • 10 core members • In-depth interviews • About their experiences • Key questions

37. Key interview questions • Why were you interested in learning computer at the beginning? • Describe a typical computing lesson? • Describe any difficulties you had during the course of learning computing skills? • Describe the computing skills you have acquired. • How did your family members and friends feel about your learning of these computing skills? • Does the learning of these computing skills affect your daily lives in any way?

38. Evolving motivation in learning ICT

39. Further Studies • Participants & nonparticipants & dropouts • Interviews • Non-participatory observation • Participatory observation

40. A Typical Scene “It was a small computer room with 9 computers installed in both sides. On the walls, older adults’ works and achievement were showed. There were greeting cards, bookmarks, and even Chinese paintings, produced by computer technology. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. The group seemed to have just finished their class. However, they were unwilling to leave. One of the students was talking to the tutor about some computer problems. At the end of the room, two female older adults were looking at the websites they have just developed. Two other learners were busy uploading their own files onto the web; one of them seemed to have problems in uploading photos into her web page and called for help. Other students came to her rescue and a discussion on effective ways of uploading photos onto the web was started. The tutor ended his talk and joined in”.

41. Contributing Factors: • Collaborative curriculum development • Negotiating for participation • Learning task • Tutor assistance • Peer support & tutoring • Collaboration: learning together, practising together and socialising together • Connection: emails, cards, exhibition, seminars • Share of work and resources

42. Opening up of ZPD • Knowledge acquisition & Increased engagement “I have become more confident gradually; that’s right, the more I learnt the more confident I became. I am now also, as asked by my friends, learning to writing my own web pages; I am now doing a little bit. Writing a web page, I thought, ‘they can do it, I can do it too’; I have tried these tricks and some of these (showing me his web pages); these pages I designed myself; some of them are not too bad. Right I need to learn these and write some new pages. And now we have not much to learn from the tutor. We are also doing some computer painting; I started it from the beginning, using Little Writer, and we are going to learn about mixing colors; these are for painting, and I’m not doing too bad. I thought to myself, I can do more when I have time, and can have my own pictures and works soon” “I think we are quite smart, know how to attach a piece of music with an email, like adding a song with some cartoons. Like during the birthday of one of the classmates, I wanted to send her a bunch of flowers, but we are getting old and it’s a bit uneasy for me to take a bunch of real flowers to her, so I sent her an email with some flowers that can bloom with different colours, from red into yellow and with glitters; and I’d asked her if she liked the roses; and she was happy to receive them.”

43. Opening up ZPD • The development of identity “What is so good (about learning computer)? You know I have been a housewife, and now I can step out of my home and participate in this (computer exhibition), shouldn’t I be very happy. I was like “a lump of rice before” (Cantonese slang, means, stupid), knew nothing, have never stepped out of my home. Now I can join different communities, and it’s fun. Of course, I’m happy” (a 85 old woman)

44. An Explanatory Framework

45. Curriculum development from a sociocultural perspective • Negotiate curriculum aims and development with older adults • Situate the learners within a specific sociocultural context • Identify significant cultural tools • Tapping social resources • Encouraging participation, collaboration and engagement

46. Conclusion “Education, in its deepest sense and at whatever age it takes place, concerns the opening of identities—exploring new ways of being that lie beyond the current state” (Wenger, 1998, p.263)