Intergenerational Learning in Practice

Together Old and Young

Margaret Kernan, Giulia Cortellesi, Margaret Kernan, Giulia Cortellesi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138363441
• eBook ISBN: 9780429776502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Based on innovative global practice, Intergenerational Learning in Practice presents a unique contribution to the field of intergenerational learning. Drawing on the Together Old and Young (TOY) programme, this book provides a comprehensive background to intergenerational learning, along with tools and resources to help develop and improve your own intergenerational practice.

Experienced international authors from Europe, North America and Australia provide a broad array of perspectives on intergenerational learning, ranging from pedagogy to planning and community development, and cover topics including:

• The context, theory and existing research behind intergenerational learning
• The changing relationships between young children and older adults
• Building communities and services for all ages
• Managing everyday encounters in public spaces between young and old
• Ensuring quality in intergenerational practice
• Insights on how intergenerational learning challenges discrimination

Intergenerational Learning in Practice is a valuable resource for practitioners and leaders in Early Childhood Education and Care and those working in primary schools, as well as professionals caring for older adults, and those working in community development.

1	Introduction to the TOY approach to intergenerational learning Margaret Kernan and Giulia Cortellesi

Before arrivals even begin, the children who participate in early day activities are abuzz, knowing that today is Wednesday and Wednesday means Mr. Bob is coming. Mr. Bob is one of a number of older adults from the local retirement community who are senior volunteers in Seton Montessori School, Illinois, United States of America.

A group of assiduous students go out to carry in the larger armchair that serves as Mr. Bob’s perch for his weekly, one-hour visit in the classroom. Before anyone knows it a line of smaller “waiting” chairs have been “queued” alongside. This is where the children will gather eagerly to wait for their turn to read to Mr. Bob. Sometimes the line grows to as long as six or eight child-sized chairs, as anyone who is a “reader” longs for this special time shared with our celebrity guest.

Everyone’s spirits are lifted with the goodness of this shared experience. As a parent heads off to work with a smile on her face she delightfully exclaims on her way out, “The children are already lining up for Mr. Bob!” And we are still an hour out from his arrival. Those esteemed guest chairs signify an opportunity, a bridge, a relationship, and an intergenerational learning experience that touches the core of who we are as people. This is what Wednesdays look and feel like for us at Seton Montessori School.

Mr. Bob is just one of several guests from the local senior retirement community who come to volunteer to listen to children read each week. This partnership, which began a few years ago, treasures and connects these community elders with children who are delighted and inspired by meaningful interactions with adults of all ages.

“I just love to come and spend time in the classroom with the children. It’s fun to watch them run about, especially because I can’t run anymore,” quipped the infamous “Mr. Bob”. “It is amazing what they can do at just five years of age. Their teachers are amazing too. I look forward to coming every week . . . and I even get a snack!”¹

The story of Mr Bob reading aloud to children is just one of many similar inspiring stories of intergenerational learning happening every day in many parts of the world.

Over the past two decades, the potential of intergenerational learning (IGL) involving young children (0–8 years) and older adults to address multiple societal concerns is commanding increased attention from policy makers, practitioners and researchers in the education, health and social sectors and the general public. The reasons to explain this are many. At the most fundamental, the need to connect young children with older adults and vice versa is perceived as an obvious and ‘human’ response to a range of social and demographic dilemmas in community life and relationships.

■ People are living longer, but young children and older adults are having less and less contact with each other.

■ Families with young children are migrating to cities and countries often far away from grandparents, and it is difficult for them to maintain close ties.

■ In many countries, older adults are living in care homes where they rarely see children and many young children are spending their days only with their own age group in day care centres, preschools and schools.

The resulting separation of the generations is having a negative effect on the well-being of both older adults and young children. It is evident in loneliness or depression of older adults (Landeiro et al., 2017), and the disconnection of children from other generations, and from ‘real’ life (The TOY Project Consortium, 2013a). It also means that young children are missing out on learning opportunities from observing adults at work and participating in everyday rituals around planting, harvesting, preparing food, making or repairing objects, and a wealth of other cultural experiences at home or close to home.

One important way of reconnecting young and old is through IGL whereby people from different generations have the opportunity to learn with and from each other and to come to understand each other.

IGL programmes are typically extra-familial and take place in a wide variety of settings or spaces in a community. They are often designed to replace traditional close multi-generational ties and opportunities to participate within multi-generational family life (Heydon, 2013). However, they are increasingly recognised as offering much more.

This book provides leaders, managers and practitioners in early childhood education and care (ECEC) with background theory and research about IGL involving young children and older adults from a range of disciplinary perspectives. It also describes inspirational intergenerational practices from different countries and is an easy-to-follow framework to develop good quality intergenerational learning practice.

What is intergenerational learning?

Intergenerational learning or IGL is the oldest method of learning, whereby knowledge, skills, values and norms are transmitted between generations, typically through the family (Hoff, 2007), and involves learning that takes place naturally as part of day-to-day social activity. A newer model of IGL – extra-familial IGL – facilitates wider social groups outside the family to contribute to the socialisation of the young, and focuses on relationships (Kaplan, 2002; Newman & Hatton-Yeo, 2008; Vanderbeck & Worth, 2015). Interest in this ‘new’ model of IGL, which began in earnest in 1990s, converged or coincided with attention to the concepts of lifelong learning and lifewide learning. Lifelong learning reflects the view that everyone should have the opportunity to engage in learning at any time during their life and that learning can take place across the full range of life experiences encompassing a multitude of levels, means and activities.

IGL is now considered a form of lifelong learning. Importantly, both IGL and lifelong learning recognise and give value to informal and non-formal learning as well as formal learning. However, IGL is more than just broadening the spaces or time frames where learning can take place –or providing opportunities for children to learn from older adults or vice versa. In addition to the transfer and exchange of knowledge, IGL fosters reciprocal learning relationships between different generations recognising that for both generations to benefit, both groups need to give and receive (Knight et al., 2014). Furthermore, it is viewed as important in IGL programming to build on the strengths and resources that might already exist in a community (Heydon, 2013), in order to also help to develop social cohesion, i.e. a sense of local identity, support and belonging, which also grants equal rights and opportunities (Fonseca et al., 2018).

The need to respond to ageing populations and to provide lifelong learning opportunities, which also increase social cohesion, has been a worldwide concern for some time. IGL programming is quite an established practice in the United States existing since the 1960s (DeVore et al., 2016). The network Generations United is very effective in offering technical support to US-based practitioners, community-based organisations and policy makers wishing to connect generations instead of separate or isolate them. They promote projects and campaigns where the oldest and youngest members of society work together to achieve transformational change, through the creation of intergenerational programmes and spaces.² A 1999 UNESCO workshop about IGL, which took place in Germany and that brought together participants from ten countries worldwide, has been identified as a key awareness-raising moment for the value of IGL programmes (Boström, 2011).

The year 2012 was designated European Union (EU) Year for Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity. During that year, the European Commission funded programmes giving priority to IGL and stimulated a big increase in cross-national projects and networks focussed on research and development work on IGL (Beth Johnson Foundation, 2011). Furthermore, since 2009, 29 April is now a well-established EU Day of celebration of Solidarity between Generations, which aims to make the European Union more age-friendly and better adapted to our ageing population, as well as have intergenerational solidarity high on the EU agenda.

It is also important to acknowledge the economic rationale for IGL, in particular the attention given to relationships and solidarity between generations. An ageing population necessitates new forms of pension and caring arrangements. Writing with respect to Australian context, Cartmel et al. (2018) characterise IG care programmes as one solution to the need to find alternative models of well-being, care and learning for the elderly and young in a context where finding appropriate care for generations is difficult. They also point to the anticipated synergies and cost savings when childcare and aged care share resources such as parking, infrastructure and workers (see also Radford et al., 2016).

All of these developments have increased awareness of IGL as an area of practice and has led to establishing IGL as a field of academic study in its own right and, since 2003, with a dedicated journal, the Journal of Intergenerational Relations (JIR). However, it is not yet mainstream in university education faculties as a learning theory. Neither is it established as focus of training or professional development in colleges of education or adult education, although the number of professional learning opportunities in IGL is also slowly growing.

Rather small pockets of research, many of which have been multi-disciplinary, have been conducted by single universities or research centres or by cross-national consortia such as:

■ The European Network of Intergenerational Learning (ENIL, https://eaea.org/our-work/projects/intergenerational-learning/);

■ The European Map of Intergenerational Learning (EMIL, http://www.emil-network.eu/);

■ The Intergenerational Contact Zones Workgroup (https://aese.psu.edu/extension/intergenerational/articles/intergenerational-contact-zones/introduction); and

■ Together Old and Young (TOY, www.toyproject.net).

Given the increased interest in this area internationally, and a growing research base demonstrating the benefits of intergenerational learning for both young and old (Gualano et al., 2018; and other chapters this book), the time is ripe for a dedicated textbook about intergenerational learning primarily for the early years’ sector.

Multiple perspectives on IGL

From the beginning, IGL research has been typically underpinned by theoretical perspectives and methods from education, psychology, gerontology and other human development areas (Larkin & Newman, 1997) with Contact Theory and Erikson’s Life Course Development Theory being the two most frequently cited theories in support of IGL (Jarrott, 2011; Kuehne & Melville, 2014). In the last decade this has broadened further to also include spatial planning and architecture (Vanderbeck & Worth, 2015; Kaplan et al., 2016) and cultural heritage (Cortellesi et al., 2018).

A review of this multi-disciplinary literature reveals different definitions of IGL, with slightly different emphases depending on disciplinary perspective. The European Network for Intergenerational Learning (ENIL) defines IGL, as “A learning partnership based on reciprocity and mutuality involving people of different ages where the generations work together to gain skills, values and knowledge” (ENIL, n.d.).

Consequently, activities are labelled as intergenerational learning when they fulfil the following three criteria:

1. Involves more than one generation;

2. Planned as purposeful and progressive, mutually beneficial learning;

3. Promotes greater understanding and respect between generations and, consequently, community cohesion.

As part of their definition of IGL, the Centre for Intergenerationa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction to the TOY Approach to Intergenerational Learning
• Part I Intergenerational Learning Context, Theory and Research
• Part II Inspirational IGL Practices
• Index