Teachers learning across generations
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The paper deals with the following research question: What and how do teachers of different generations learn and which opportunities for mutual learning do they get in various situations in school life? Researching intergenerational learning of teachers in the school, the researcher wants to focus on informal and nonformal intergenerational learning. Learning in the workplace is a relatively traditional research topic (Novotný, 2009) while its intergenerational dimension has received less interest (Spannring, 2008). School staff however consists and is bound to consist of members of different generations, mainly due to the shifting retirement age and the ensuing longer period of economic activity among seniors. Age diversity at the workplace may bring a number of benefits, e.g. generate respect for senior staff and increase these peoples' initiative, or provide them with opportunities to belong and be an integral part of society, involve them in support social networks, inspire others to deal with problems based on the experience of other generations etc. (Schlimbach, 2010). How work teams deal with this variety and how they use the potential for intergenerational learning is at the core of our research. The importance and appeal of researching the topic of intergenerational learning in schools is stronger for the fact that developing teacher expertise and acquiring a non-formal status of an expert teacher is a slow and difficult process requiring expertise maintenance and renewal throughout the teaching career (comp. Švaříček, 2011). This is another reason why the question how the specific situation in school is shared between generations (comp. Lazarová, 2011) must be answered. |
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