The term education describes the process of acquiring abilities, skills, experiences, and knowledge systems as well as the results of this process. Specific contents of education reflect general cultural values and preferences of social environments and milieus, social change, and societal progress.
Analyses of social environments and milieus confirm marked differences in formative educational experiences during childhood and youth, expectations and subjective conceptions of education, interests and barriers in extended vocational and general education, demands for methods and atmosphere, interest in educational content related to personality, health and key qualifications, competence, and informal learning, and the subjective attractiveness of alternative providers of education.
Since the contents of education necessary for success in a given culture change continuously – it is assumed that the knowledge of mankind doubles approximately every 40 years, and in some economic sectors as often as every 6 months – educational activities can neither be concentrated in nor restricted to a single phase of the life span.
Interest in individual educational activities in adulthood is determined by lifelong interactions between opportunities and the necessity to learn new things and by the degree of openness to new experiences and knowledge systems. A comprehensive understanding of education is not confined to the acquisition of knowledge systems, but considers explicitly the abilities, skills, and experiences essential for creative ways of using knowledge to cope effectively with actual and (potential) future tasks and challenges. Moreover, the significance of education for the development of the individual is confined neither to his or her working life nor to the occupational sphere.
In addition to occupation-related aims such as economic growth, maintenance or enhancement of innovative potentials, and individual employability, independence, self-determination, and social participation are principal aims of education in adulthood and education in elderly to support the realization and perfection of a multitude of individual leisure activities and interests.
A comprehensive understanding of education should consider formal, non-formal, and informal learning. Formal learning typically refers to institutional contexts and is structured in terms of educational objectives, contents, methods, and evaluation. Formal learning is regularly documented and certified. By contrast, non-formal learning results from daily activities in the context of work, family, and leisure time and is not structured by learning objectives, contents, methods, and evaluation. The main difference between non-formal and informal learning is that the latter refers to unstructured learning processes outside educational institutions, but is not systematic or intentional.
Education also comprises exchange processes among equal partners in social interaction in everyday life. On the condition that the experiences of older people are taken seriously, even apparently incidental intergenerational contacts might offer opportunities for the younger generation to benefit from older people’s creative modes of successful coping with tasks and challenges. Accordingly, the possibilities and limits of a more effective use of the potentials of intergenerational learning are related to the socialization of old age in society. In this regard it is of particular importance whether old age and aging are constructed and represented as a social problem and whether negative stereotypes of old age and aging are salient in intergenerational contacts.
From an educational perspective, life span development can be described as a continuous and active process of coping with developmental tasks, i.e., demands, challenges, and chances that depend on people’s environment and life situation in given phases of the aging process. Specific developmental tasks are conceptualized as a consequence of the interaction between biological maturity, normative conceptions of successful aging, or development in society and individual plans, aims, needs, and values.
The significance of environment and life situation for life span development is twofold:
first, coping successfully with demands of the environment and life situation increases the potential for coping with future demands and initiates further development;
second, chances offered by environment and life situation contribute to the realization of specific developmental gains.
Aging implies different processes of change in different dimensions of the person. In each dimension, gains and losses can be observed simultaneously; changes in one dimension are a poor predictor of changes in other dimensions. Accumulated and organized experiences, knowledge systems, and strategies for coping effectively with familiar problems and tasks are important developmental gains (in the sense of psychological growth) in older adulthood.
