Projeto de colaboração intergeracional : encontro entre gerações na sala de aula

Abstract

The ageing of the population in the last decades in Portugal, here represented by people older than 65, has increased 7%, and has gone through a range from 11,4% in 1981 to 19,1% in 2011’s total population. The projections about the average age of the population also show that it can ben increased from 43,1 years in 2013 to 51,3 years in 2060. The ageing of population arises one of the questions which is related to ageism, associated to prejudice and stereotypes concerning age and has lead not to value the experience and knowledge of the older ones. The perspective of lifespan considers that the elder people do not form a homogeneous group and that diversity among people has a tendency to increase with age, being important to create support environments in all stages of life in order to promote active ageing. This investigation presents a report of an investigation we made consisting in severall meeting experiences between generations, in classrooms. In the same year we made experiences with 2 classes with the same old people, and in consecutive years, with different classes and different seniors. The intention was to stimulate the ICT classes (Information and communications technology) combining the presence and knowledge of the older ones with the skill, informatics, know-how and irreverence of the younger ones. Web pages were built with contents presented, guided and proposed by the older ones and developped electronically by the youngest (adolescent students). In this way an intergeracional project has been developped with continued learning practices. Before the implementation of the project, we made an evaluation of the adolescent’s sensibility to the development of the intergeracional projects that served as guides to its implementation. Fot that purpose were made surveys about VFI - Volunteers Function Theory. We also used the surveys about the the school involvement to understand the evaluation made by the participants who enrolled and were benefited by the experiences carried out by the programs of the intergeracional projects. Surveys on social skills were also applied before and after each experiment. Possibilities of approach have been possible, both with dependent elderly and with independent seniors, performing activities with contents initiated by the adolescent students and complemented with the perspectives of the elderly, or starting from contents of life experience and / or professional of the elders. It is also pointed out that intergenerational experiences with students of the humanities could be more vanguardous in relation to the more technical areas, which imply less social contact, especially in relation to the elderly. Some interesting aspects of the experience are: a greater acceptance of the differences of each; Learning and knowledge at various levels, technical / professional, social, development of more positive attitudes between the generations and spirit of cooperation.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	Portuguese
Supervisor	OSCAR CONCEIÇÃO DE SOUSA (Supervisor)