Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

ABSTRACTABSTRACT METHODSMETHODS

Intergenerational programs connect young and old for mutually beneficial interactions. Intergenerational strategies linking adolescents and elders have targeted issues including aging in place, civic engagement, school attendance, and drug abuse. Oral history projects have fostered children’s language skills, supported life review for seniors, and built intergenerational relationships. Such programs typically involve well elders; we piloted an intergenerational Living History project with an adult day services program and middle school. Our goal was to support positive intergenerational relationships and children’s academic goals. Elders (n=8) and 2 seventh grade language arts classes (n=25 students) met for six weekly sessions to share their social histories. Each elder met with 3-5 students and a facilitator. Students practiced communication skills through the intergenerational sessions and associated class exercises. Adults prepared by gathering personal artifacts and discussing upcoming topics.

Students completed pre- and post-surveys regarding their attitudes towards elders, views on their own aging, and assessment of the program. Our presentation focuses on change in students’ descriptions of older adults and their evaluation of the project. We observed a decrease in negative comments related to elders’ appearance, physical abilities, and socioemotional attributes while positive comments related to appearance and socioemotional attributes increased. Comments indicated that interacting with the elders challenged students’ ageist stereotypes. All the students indicated the Living History project should continue with other classes. Other programs serving frail elders may find similar intergenerational projects support relational, developmental, and academic needs of community members typically segregated by age and institution.

INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION

Department of Human Development (0416) Blacksburg, VA 24061. sjarrott@vt.edu 540-231-5434Presented at the 60th Annual Scientific Meeting, Gerontological Society of America, San Francisco, CA, November 16-20, 2007

Living History: Integrating intergenerational relationships at a middle schoolShannon E. Jarrott, Ph.D., Matthew F. Komelski, M.A., & Aaron P.C. Weintraub, M. S.

This work was supported by a 2007 grant from Virginia Tech’s College ofLiberal Arts & Human Sciences

RESULTSRESULTS

• Institutional segregation of young and old generations is common. • Lack of contact can lead to ill-informed ideas about each generations’ circumstances. • Intergenerational programming has been used to provide positive intergenerational

contact and achieve developmental, relational, and community goals. • Intergenerational programs that connect elders with school age children typically,

involve active, healthy, independent adults. Our program was unique in its approach of engaging frail elders as living historians to school age children.

• Regarding the needs of the populations with which we worked:• Middle school students are expected to develop communication and research skills

in their social studies and language arts classes. • Frail elders in care programs need opportunities for meaningful engagement that

support personhood. • Using theories of contact (Allport, 1954) and personhood (Kitwood, 1997), we

developed living history sessions that emphasized participants’ social histories and strengths, mutual benefit, and cooperation to achieve a common goal.

• We applied a results-management model (Orthner & Bowen, 2004) to build social capital and help meet the needs of both generations in their program settings via a 6-week living history project.

CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPSCONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS• The Living History sessions allow middle school students to co-construct

interpersonal and historical knowledge with older adults. Students evidence these gains through changes in the way they characterize older adults as well as through their biographical poetry and journal entries.

• We are encouraged by our findings in a project that united youth & frail elders, especially in light of concerns that such intergenerational partnerships could negatively affect children’s attitudes (i.e., McGuire, 1986; Middlecamp & Gross).

• The low intensity design of the intervention is not geared to effect a change but rather to see if interactions addressing the needs of both groups can, at the same time, promote intergenerational solidarity. We expect that, without changing the nature of the intervention, the positive trends identified in our pilot will reach statistical significance as more cases are added.

• As we resume the Living History project in 2007, we address several issues:Obstacles and adaptations• Small sample size with generally positive baseline scores presented statistical

challenges to analyzing data with a single cohort of students. Subsequently, we modified the evaluation instruments to emphasize qualitative reflections of youth and elders on what they learned from the session and what they contributed individually to the session.

• Group facilitators required more intensive training and feedback to effectively support group interactions. Facilitators now meet weekly for session training, and they meet with the older adults weekly to prepare for each session.

• The historical events students studied were not always salient to the elders, even though they had lived through these periods. Sessions were modified to focus on elders’ and children’s social histories and lived experiences.

• Demands on staff and elders lead us to seek independent elders from the community to serve as living historians for the classes we work with in 2008.

• Feedback from teachers, staff, and participants encourages us to pursue opportunities to implement similar intergenerational projects with other groups. Community programs may utilize intergenerational opportunities to address the needs of their older clients, youth, or the community. Points to consider include:Replication and Expansion• Create standard protocol for the intergenerational sessions.• Pursue education research funding to promote an integrated gerontology

curriculum that incorporates textual and experiential learning with elders possessing a range of abilities.

• The impact of this program is not limited to the time that the children and elders spent together. A skillful teacher can extend the learning opportunity with students as they consider the meaning of community and aging through their discussions and writing outside of the living history sessions.

Participants • Older adults from VT ADS (n=8) with mild cognitive and/or physical impairment • Seventh grade language arts students from Blacksburg Middle School (n=25)

• Equal proportion of boys & girls. Predominantly white (11% African American).• Facilitators: Graduate & undergraduate students in HD adult development courses,

staff from ADS, and teachers from the middle schoolProcedures

• Sessions designed to foster students’ language arts and social studies curriculum as well as older adults’ active participation and reminiscence.

• Facilitators trained to protect confidentiality, accommodate sensory impairments, and facilitate intergenerational interactions.

• Each class of 9-12 children met weekly for a 6-week session with 4-5 ADS participants. Adult and child participants prepared for the sessions ahead of time.

• The sessions were organized as follows:1. Introductions: “Who am I?” . 4. Mapping community history2. Sharing family artifacts 5. Interviews & timelines3. “When I was 12” 6. Closure & farewell poems

Measures• A mix of quantitative and qualitative measures were used, including the Aging Semantic

Differential and measures of empathy and social distance. Given the small sample size and ceiling effects at baseline, our analyses focused on the qualitative items.

• Qualitative items centered on students’ perceptions of older adults, what they do with older adults they know, and what they think it will be like to be old. At the end of the program, students reflected on what surprised them about the adults and the project.

Analysis• Answers to open-ended items were transcribed for thematic analysis.• Qualitative terms children used to describe older adults were coded numerically as

positive, neutral, or negative. Sums were created for the entire group of students.

Our analysis of open-ended questions revealed a positive trend in the children’s characterization of older adults.

• The total number of positive terms used by the sample of children to describe older adults increased 28.6% (n.s.), while negative descriptors decreased 26.6% (n.s.).

• Journal entries and poems evidenced gains in socio-historical and interpersonal knowledge that challenged children’s ageist stereotypes. Several students echoed this child’s comment, “I was surprised to find out how much they remembered form when they were young.”

• Students demonstrated consensus that the program should continue. Some suggested increased number and duration of sessions. Others recommended revising protocol to increase interaction and enhance relationships. For example, students recommended more personal contact by reducing the number of students per group.