It is evident that working with seniors has its own specificities, which require a specially prepared instructor who understands the characteristics of this target group and methods for more effective learning. Author Ko (2020) defined several requirements for the personality of an instructor in the context of senior education, which we present in this blog in a concise summary.

• Understanding Participants on Multiple Levels: The instructor needs to understand participants on physical, psychological, social, emotional, cultural, and gender levels. This requires a longer preparation process compared to educating younger target groups.
• Proactive Assistance: The instructor should be able to help participants who have certain difficulties even before they ask for help. This ability presumes well-developed empathetic feeling.
• Motivation Through Practical Solutions: A successful instructor helps learners solve their life problems through education. This is supported by one of Knowles’ (1998, in Ko, 2020) six principles of andragogy, which states that the more education relates to people’s lives, the higher value it holds for them.
• Cultivating Strong Relationships: The instructor should strive to create and cultivate strong relationships between themselves and the participants and also among the participants themselves.
• Fostering a Positive Group Climate: The instructor should support a positive group climate based on encouragement, a sense of safety, comfort, and non-threat.
• Individual Engagement: The instructor should aim to understand and engage each participant individually as much as possible.
• Practical Activities: The instructor should use practical activities to engage participants significantly.
• Somatic and Physical Learning: A new approach to learning is the strategy of “somatic and physical learning,” which the instructor should use through activities engaging physical appearance, senses, and other experiences involving the body.
• Starting with the Known: Based on the strategy “start with the known,” the instructor should allow participants to express what they already know and have experienced, to build on that in the teaching process.
• Encouraging Self-Stimulation: The instructor should encourage and utilize the self-stimulation of participants, identified as the strongest determinant causing differences among participants (Callahan et al., 2003, in Ko, 2020).
• Reducing Dependency: Throughout the educational activity, the instructor should reduce participants’ dependency on them and more support mutual learning.
• Leveraging Peer Teaching: The instructor should apply the “leverage effect” in education through group teaching (peer teaching), where older adults can help each other understand theoretical knowledge or acquire skills. Such a teaching model is confirmed by research by Mathews and Straughan (2014), where 77% of participants aged 50-74 identified learning with the assistance of a senior as helpful in mastering the subject matter.
• Creating Opportunities for Experience Sharing: The instructor should create opportunities for learners to share experiences, support each other, and build relationships with other participants (Ko, 2020).

Michal Koricina

Source: Ko, H. (2020). Teaching older adults: an instructional model from Singapore. In Educational Gerontology. [online]. Vol. 46, No. 12, pp. 731-745, ISSN 1521-0472. [cited 2020-10-15]. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03601277.2020.1807689