Human Factors in Aging: Issues for Adult Education

Abstract

As adult educators our education and training efforts in the later years should be based on images of the older person as person. If these images are guided largely by problem or deficiency assumptions, and they often are in our study of aging in the workplace, we negatively stereotype both the person and their needs, and also the later years as a period of time. Images of the older person should allow for aging to imply some purpose. As adult educators we should assume that the person is designed to learn and to adapt through the life-span: the dynamics and structures for learning are embedded in the neurophysiological mechanisms of the organism and influenced by psychosocial and sociocultural factors of the environment.