Learning is not just about gaining knowledge, skills or competencies for professional life Significant learning is transformative, impacting the learners’ life, values and attitudes notwithstanding their age!

Adult educators will be using the How-to-Guide

The TIMELESS PROJECT is targeting both adult educators and older learners of English.

In the TIMELESS PROJECT there are several outputs, one of them being the How -to-Guide for adult educators. The project partners are dealing with assets of intangible cultural heritage suggested collectively by their learners in partners’ countries. These are stories and documents about oral expressions and traditions, social practices, performance arts, cultural identities, etc. There are so many manifestations of cultural heritage that they are classified with difficulty.

Adult educators working with older learners will be using the Course for Educators and the Know-How Guide supporting the delivery of the course divided into six modules.

The Know-How Guide will assist adult educators in delivering the Course, particularly as it concerns the issues of

• Recruiting older learners
• Selecting intangible cultural items jointly with older learners
• Collecting knowledge and learning resources
• Creating stories/narratives
• Digitalizing the learning: Story Maps and Kahoot
• Evaluation

More importantly, the Know-How Guide is devoted to connecting the ‘Hidden Culture’ items with the process of learning foreign languages.

Searching for intangible cultural heritage while learning English

The How-to- Guide deals with several topics, selecting intangible cultural items jointly with older learners being just one of them.

Most probably, older learners will provide most diverse suggestions. Some suggestions will be convergent or overlapping. Such suggestions can become an item of intangible cultural heritage, if the community of learners attributes them shared social value. Or, to put it differently, if the community of learners recognizes its value for society and the preservation of its identity.

 The traditional approaches to learning based on an imposed syllabus and learning methods may be useful in formal education, but not in non-formal education which has to be flexible and as close to adults’ life as possible. This is particularly true with older learners.

Find out more: https://www.eutimeless.info/en/course/1 

Dr. Dušana Findeisen, now a head of the Institute for Research and Development of education within Slovenian Third Age University, Dušana Findeisen has been dealing with education of older people, education about older people, and education for local development in former Yugoslavia, Slovenia and in many European countries since 1984. In 1986 she co/established Slovenian Third Age University of which she was President for 15 years. She (co)- introduced a great number of nation-wide scientifically grounded innovations (a national network of older people acting as cultural mediators in public institutions, education for trainers in the field of education for later life, education for local development, etc.) For five years she was an AGE PLATFORM EUROPE expert in employment and education. At the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Philosophy she taught Socio-cultural animation and education for local development and other courses. She authored, co-authored more than 300 scientific and professional articles and she published five monographs.