삶의 질 향상을 위한 노인교육의 발전 방향

A Study of the Elderly Education to Enhance Quality of Life

This study examines the elderly education as a program for enhancing the quality of life. For many people, the elderly education has been recognized as a program for leisure and pastime. Since the aged people have lots of free-time, participation in the elderly education itself must be good for them. In order to enhance quality of life for the aged, however, the elderly education should be organized to provide with more constructive and fruitful education than leisure and pastimes. For this, it is necessary to develop systematic educational programs for the elders. While the educational programs for the elders may be diverse according to the specific backgrounds of the participants (for example, sex, socioeconomic status, geographic regions, etc.), they should be planned and practiced by the general characteristics and educational needs of the aged. In the educational programs for the elders, thus, expressive objectives are better than behavioral objectives. The educational contents for the aged had better be selected by mutual agreement between teachers and learners. In general, it is desirable for the contents to be synthetic knowledge rather than authorized and structured knowledge. The educational methods for the aged should be facilitative methods or socratic approaches rather than didactic methods. It is also desirable for the educational results of the elders not to be controlled. The learners should be allowed to evaluate themselves.