Advanced Age Pedagogy
Since the summer term 2017, the Centre for Gerontology in Curative Education has been coordinating the focus module "Pedagogy of Advanced Age". The module is aimed at students in their 5th or 6th semester of the Bachelor of Education and Bachelor of Education in Pedagogy. The courses of the focus module are offered by staff of the teaching and research department Rehabilitation Science Gerontology.
Background
A positive feature of demographic change is that more and more people are ageing healthily and with little impact. Many people of advanced age are now able to maintain an active lifestyle. This development is accompanied by the fact that older people have become an important target group for educational activities. Their motives for learning and education, however, range widely. The range extends from participation in exercises with rehabilitative objectives, through independent or guided searches for ways to master everyday tasks, to intrinsically motivated participation in a course or course of study.
The aim of the focus module is to bring students of educational science closer to the theory and empiricism of aging and learning in old age and to convey typical learning and educational motives of older people. Students are also sensitised to the effects of age-related changes, losses due to illness or disability and critical life events. They get to know the challenges of everyday life as the driving force behind learning and educational processes in old age.
Lectures
The module can be taken as a small focus (two courses) or a large focus (four courses). In terms of content, the courses are assigned to the fields of Gerontological Basics, Selected Topics and Educational Offers, Forms of Intervention, Research Projects.
Gerontological Basics (Course 1)
The courses in this subject area teach central theories and empirical findings on ageing, old age and learning in old age.
Selected Topics of Gerontology (Course 2 or 3)
In the courses, within a selected subject area, it is worked out how learning needs, processes and strategies of people of advanced age are influenced by chronic illnesses, critical life events, (lifelong) disability or the assumption of social roles. Building on this, it will be discussed which didactic approaches, teaching-learning arrangements or forms of support can best correspond to the individual perspective of an elderly person.
Educational offers, interventions, research approaches (Event 4)
Selected (research) projects from interventional gerontology, geragogy or gerontopsychology are presented in the courses.
Module Exams
Irrespective of the type of focus, the contents of the Basic Event (Event 1) will be examined in the form of an exam. The examination takes place twice a year. It is scheduled in the first weeks of the summer and winter semester holidays at the same time as the basic course.
If students are interested in the main focus, a term paper must also be written. This term paper can be registered for each seminar of the courses 2, 3 and 4. The topic and the time frame of the term paper will be agreed between students and lecturer.