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1.
ABSTRACT

Education is the main vehicle for empowering adults, and can contribute to community wellbeing. However, regarding mature adults (MAs) (over 45 years old), age has been identified in various studies as a significant barrier to accessing educational activities. This paper focuses on MAs’ motivations to learn through an exploratory survey undertaken in six European countries. A K-means cluster analysis based on 16 variables has been run on n = 846 valid cases. Four clusters describing distinctive behaviours and attitudes of MAs towards learning activities were identified. The study confirms that MAs’ motivations to learn are very diverse, overcoming some of the so-called myths of global aging, such as the homogeneity of MAs or the correlation between age and a decline in motivation to learn. Furthermore, analysing the main motivations of MA learners can be useful for adapting education to cater to their specific needs, boosting a more inclusive education, and promoting MAs’ empowerment.  相似文献   

2.
This paper focuses on the results of a mixed-methods study of 13 participants in a Radical Humanities programme designed as a transformative learning space for low-income adults who have experienced barriers to learning. Using demographic questionnaires, semi-structured narrative interviews and course evaluations this study examined participants’ experiences in the programme and the impact on their learning, sense of agency and future ambitions. As the first phase of a longitudinal project on the well-being and agency of under-represented and marginalized learners, this preliminary study revealed five predominant themes emerging from learners’ experiences: (1) self-reflective meaning-making processes; (2) interrelated personal and communal growth; (3) appreciation of diversity; (4) emerging sense of self-as-learner; (5) renewed aspirations. This paper argues that transformative learning for low-income adults is a complex and challenging process that entails participants’ ongoing negotiations of self, learning, and purpose. Understanding and evaluating the effectiveness of transformative learning within a social-emancipatory humanities programme requires attention to the programme’s social context and choices faced by participants. Programme participation fosters increased well-being, deeper relationships and hope for the future. However, these tangible benefits are tempered by constraints of individual and structural systems that, for some students, impose limitations on their ability to enact change in themselves and in their lives.  相似文献   

3.
ABSTRACT

One area that remained off the research radar is that interface between senior centers and learning programs, and hence, their potential to act as community-based learning hubs. Countering such a state of affairs, this article reports on an action research study to investigate the extent that a transformative learning program in a senior center can lead learners to improved levels of personal and social empowerment. The research project sought to meet its goal and objectives through the ‘action research’ design, by planning and executing a critical educational gerontological programme for persons attending a Maltese senior center. The learning program following a critical geragogical approach which encourages learners to discuss and problematize each theme in the curriculum. Pretest-posttest focus groups found the learning program to be successful in improving learners’ levels of personal empowerment as they acquired a strong awareness of how social differences are structurally produced due to inequities and discriminations based on social class, gender, and age differences. However, the quest achieving critical consciousness remained an elusive one due to immanence and internal agism, as well as the fact that political action arises as a lifetime narrative. Critical educational gerontology remains steadfastly hinged upon the ‘successful aging’ paradigm that overlooks how later life is also underpinned by ill-health, abjection, care relations, and loss of agency. It is hoped that this action research project acts as a catalyst for future studies in critical educational gerontology to be framed by a fourth age social imaginary.  相似文献   

4.
ABSTRACT

The National Silver Academy (NSA) was launched in 2016 as part of the Singapore government’s Action Plan for Successful Aging. This paper uses a grounded approach to explore and assess critical geragogical elements that are enabling, empowering and transformative for older learners. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 48 participants who had completed an NSA course. Although three different categories of older learners were identified in this study, most tend to internalize ageism and took courses to counter ageist stereotypes of being frail, dependent and useless. In terms of geragogy, participants articulated four key learning needs at the NSA. These were: (i) relatable, empathetic and engaging instructors; (ii) interactive and versatile methods of teaching with emphasis on real-life applications; (iii) flexible and accessible curriculum and course content appropriate to learners’ capabilities and expectations and (iv) inclusive and disability-friendly learning environments catering to a wide spectrum of learners. At the NSA, instructors are crucial to the empowerment of older learners by leading the challenge against ageism, promoting learners’ confidence and self-worth as well as enabling safe spaces for personal transcendence and creative expression. This study reinforces the need for more contextualized models of geragogy to dismantle structural and internalized forms of ageism by taking into account older learners’ cultural beliefs about aging, access to education, confidence and competences to navigate both formal and informal learning environments.  相似文献   

5.
Abstract

This paper will argue that academic programmes which emphasise personal and/or professional growth create a ‘responsibility’ on their part to continue to support learners’ development following graduation.

The paper will present preliminary evidence gathered from recently graduated Master of Business Administration (MBA) learners which reveals that unless support is continued, in time learners will revert back to previous practices of learning and behaviour in the course of their work, thus undoing the benefits that the programme has sought to introduce.  相似文献   

6.
This article examines the challenge of opening and transforming South African education. ‘Openness’ and ‘transformation’ of any education programme in any society are ethicopolitical processes. In the case of South Africa, the transition from an autocratic education system serving the interests of a minority to a more modern and democratic educational dispensation demands a critical rethinking of the meaning of these twin concepts of openness and transformation. The policy of outcomes‐based education (OBE) has been used as a strategy for educational change. This article argues that, although OBE can be understood in the context of the desire for change, the programme’s implementation does not lead to radical opening and qualitative transformation of the South African educational sector. Any pedagogy of radical empowerment through political and deliberate advocacy policies needs to take into consideration the content of the new system of education, the professional quality of the educators, and the calibre of the new learners.  相似文献   

7.
Abstract

This paper presents the theoretical and methodological foundations of the Teixint Cultures ‘Weaving Cultures Together project: a communitarian research-action programme aimed at providing literacy skills in Catalan for African immigrant women, which uses their ‘Funds of Knowledge’ to develop bilingual books in Catalan, Arabic and Mandinka for their children. The results show the benefits of implementing projects that promote literacy activities at home as well as the empowerment of immigrant women.  相似文献   

8.
Context: In Lebanon, older adults face socioeconomic challenges that are expected to worsen due to an increase in older adult population, chronic governmental neglect, institutionalised ageism and a lack of educational and social gerontologists. Consequently, local older adults are in dire need for social change, which can be initiated through later life learning. The University for Seniors (UfS) is a University for the Third Age providing learning opportunities for older people in Lebanon. While most older adult learning programmes are occupied with their learners’ self-fulfilment, Critical Educational Gerontology promotes emancipatory learning and social change. Study Objective and Design: A case discussion based on a variety of data sources is used to showcase and then challenge the practices of UfS from a critical educational gerontology perspective. To do that, we consider the semantic difference between emancipation and empowerment in their relation to power. Recommendations: We recommend programme-specific measures starting by revisiting the current philosophy of learning, targeting social change as an additional goal to later life learning, and advocacy for the establishment of educational degrees to prepare professionals and academicians in the field of social gerontology. We also recommend a more critical use of empowerment and emancipation within critical educational gerontology.  相似文献   

9.
Abstract

If service-learning is to fulfil its potential to contribute to meaningful social change, scholars and practitioners must consider how service might foster a dynamic relationship between knowledge, the learner and the community. This paper challenges modernist conceptions of knowledge as a ‘commodity’ that can be delivered and consumed, and instead identifies service to the community as a meaningful context for learners to interact with knowledge in a coherent framework for the explicit purpose of individual and social change. The Preparation for Social Action programme in Uganda is offered as an example in which relationships between knowledge, learners and the community can be examined. Findings from an analysis of curricular materials, participant observation and interview and focus-group data collected from its local instructors and administrators are discussed.  相似文献   

10.
Priti Chopra 《Compare》2014,44(3):335-355
This paper draws on ethnographic vignettes in an Indian rights-based approach to adult education programmes in order to examine the contestations and negotiations of facilitators in interface situations involving programme capacity building, monitoring and evaluation practice. The paper proposes that making visible the hegemonic nature of relationships between different adult education actors is critical to engendering democratic participation in adult education. It explores conditions of possibility for democratic participation in adult education in terms of (1) conceptualising empowerment as self-representation and autonomy; and (2) interrogating one’s identity through self-deconstruction as an ethical responsibility and commitment to equity and social justice. This analysis has implications for informing and enhancing democratic participation in adult education capacity building, monitoring and evaluation processes.  相似文献   

11.
“Learner-centred” and “teacher as facilitator,” among the most influential concepts (re)shaping education over the past decades, are often represented as bringing democratic participation, equality, and empowerment to learners and helping transform and liberate societies. At the same time, these concepts are constructed in binary terms with “teacher-centred” and “teacher as authority” projecting the two ends as being mutually exclusive. Drawing on data collected through interviews and scholarly works from teachers teaching Humanities and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in Asian and English-speaking Western universities, this article examines their positionings, mode, and form of critique/criticality of learner-centred education. It demonstrates in what ways equality as the starting point (Ranciere) is not embedded in how learner-centred education has largely been promoted in these contexts. As well, while Ranciere’s concepts of equality and dissensus may empower those seen as marginalised and disadvantaged, these concepts fail to acknowledge the multiplicities and dynamics of positions of those presupposed to be “powerful” and “privileged.”  相似文献   

12.
The English further education (FE) sector caters for young learners who are regularly defined as at risk due to a range of economic and social challenges, as transitions from youth to adulthood become more protracted, and inequalities amongst young people and between generations persist and deepen. At a time when policy places increasing responsibilities on governors and leaders to balance college performance and cost-effectiveness against FE’s long-standing social justice mission, this article analyses how this tension plays out through the discursive construction of young learners by two English college governing boards. We use a critical discourse analysis approach to connect how young learners are ‘talked into being’ through the micro-level processes of governing within the wider context in which college governing operates. We argue that, despite a wider drive for governors to interact with learners, their understanding of learners is dominated by data, through which young learners in particular are constituted as a risk rather than at risk. We explore the discursive constructions of young learners that ensue in this data-dominated context, and the social practices governing boards use to manage the risks posed by young learners. We highlight the different positionings of governors and college senior managers within these constitutive practices, arguing that the ways young learners are discursively constructed is revealing of a central tension in college governing practices—that between the high-performing and the socially just college.  相似文献   

13.
ABSTRACT

The humanist and critical principles of educational gerontology attribute different goals to education in later life. Self-Actualization is the goal of humanist educational gerontology, while empowerment, emancipation, and social change are the goals of critical educational gerontology. Liberal arts education is dominant in later-life learning. Both the humanist and the critical philosophies of learning in older age claim that this type of education is not empowering. Empowerment is a contested concept that has been defined through a set of constructs ranging from psychological capacities to attitudes and behaviors. In terms of capital, empowerment translates into gains in identity and social capital, operationalized in the variables agency and social and civic participation, respectively. The present study investigated the empowering potential of liberal arts courses using the BeLL survey data of 7,338 adult learners. Through a series of ANOVAs and a regression model, we found that age, gender, educational attainment, the number of courses, and changes in agency are significantly associated with changes in social and civic participation. We concluded that liberal arts education does empower adult learners, especially older adults, women, and individuals with lower educational attainment. Given that goal-related claims in the principles of educational gerontology have been empirically challenged, we recommend a new statement of principles that takes into account the latest developments in the field, as well as learners’ agential capacities and the structural inequalities they face.  相似文献   

14.
Abstract

This article explores how George Lapassade’s institutional pedagogy meets the definition of ‘praxis’ formulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, as the activity creating reflective and deliberative subjects. Lapassade applies Castoriadis’s criticism of bureaucracy to transform the teacher-learners’ relationship and emphasises how self-governance group dynamics among learners facilitates learning in general and access to critical thinking in particular. Castoriadis’s concept of democracy as individual and collective autonomy demands an interpretation of equality as a dynamic process instead of as a state of social relations, both in politics and in classrooms. His understanding of politics as a matter of opinions rather than applied knowledge necessitates a questioning of how the relationship between politics and knowledge is presented in classrooms. The argument articulates two main themes: (1) authority and power both between adults and children and within class groups, and (2) the relationship between knowledge and politics, problematised by Castoriadis’s concept of truth.  相似文献   

15.
16.
ABSTRACT

In Taiwan, older adults over the age of 65 made up 12.51% of the population in 2015, causing the government to promote older adult education to help achieve active aging. As a result, more elderly people have attended learning activities and applied new skills to volunteering. The researcher conducted focus group interviews with 93 older adults from 13 service learning groups to illuminate this process of transforming from learner to volunteer. The findings are as follows. (a) The retirees and empty-nesters undergo discovery during the learning process in order to become learners. (b) These learners then become volunteers through the support from teachers and key persons, through the desire to share learning outcomes, and through answering the call to serve others. (c) The transformative learning rewarded the older adults with improved physical, spiritual, and mental health, as well as gratitude and a new sense of meaning in life.  相似文献   

17.
Abstract

Research suggests that innovative and engaging professional development is instrumental in supporting teachers in developing their competence and confidence in teaching sustainability. An international initiative was developed to explore whether a competencies-oriented Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) professional development model was transferable across three different international contexts (Ireland, Germany and Mexico). This paper reports on the adaptation of this model within the Irish context, through the development of an innovative professional development programme for primary teachers. Through a mixed-methods approach which gathered data via pre- and post-programme surveys, teachers’ reflective journals and post-programme group interviews, the paper explores Irish primary school teachers’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, teaching sustainability through science education after participation in a professional development programme. The findings suggest that this programme, structured around the existing evidence for effective professional development in science education and ESD, positively influences teachers’ self-efficacy, supports teachers’ critical engagement with sustainability competencies and promotes the development of transformative pedagogies for sustainability through Inquiry-Based Science Education.  相似文献   

18.
Martin Haigh 《Compare》2008,38(4):427-440
The internationalisation of higher education aims to produce ‘citizens that feel at home in the world’ but the process is driven by both economic and educational motivations. Today, the international community aspires to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC), together planetary citizenship, and with them emphases on personal and ethical responsibilities to the environment and future that contrast with current competitive individualism. Driven by rising numbers of international students, curricula are already shifting toward more global assessments of society and environment. However, progress is being impeded by management systems that take commerce as their model. While instructors strive to ensure that learners consider their responsibilities through ESD and EDC, their message is being contradicted by their context. Since learners learn from their total environment, not just in classrooms, changes are required. Granting greater attention to sustainability issues and the empowerment of learners and teachers would allow a better constructive alignment between educational and economic imperatives.  相似文献   

19.
20.
画像技术在当前精准营销中的应用非常广泛,而其在教育领域尤其是在线学习者的特征识别方面研究较少。文章从学习者的一般特征、学习准备、学习风格、行为特征四个方面对学习者进行分析,提出在线学习者画像描述的总体框架。同时,通过机器学习对在线学习行为数据进行挖掘,文章分别从以上四个方面对学习者画像进行建模研究,重点讨论了学习风格的建模过程,并通过对在线学习者个案分析,阐述了学习者画像在指导学习资源精准推荐、评估在线学习者学业失败或退出风险等方面的应用,为个性化教育实施提供了实践案例。  相似文献   

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