This book demonstrates how digital empowerment of education for older adults is a timely and globally significant subject. Achieving inclusive, high-quality, and balanced development of elderly education is particularly urgent in China, a nation currently experiencing an unprecedented "gray tide." The topic is important to the enhancement of well-being of older adults, so that every senior citizen can enjoy the right to education in a community for lifelong learning to achieve educational equity. It will help older adults to cross the digital divide so that no group would be left behind. Therefore, the study of the digital empowerment of education for older adults is of national and international significance.
Based on literature on Empowerment and Instructional Design, this book project proposes a theoretical framework of the digital empowerment of education for older adults for empirical investigation and validation. A sample of elderly learners from Guangdong University for the Elderly were selected to participate in in-depth interviews designed to understand the learning needs of elderly learners as an online learning community. Challenges of the digital empowerment of education for older adults are examined. Based on the research findings, a theoretical model of digital empowerment of education for older adults is constructed. National contexts of the Chinese case studies are illuminated along with international implications for lesson-drawing in related policy making and professional practice.
Chapter
1. Introduction.
Chapter
2. Education for Older Adults.-
Chapter
3. Digital Empowerment and Inclusion.
Chapter
4. The Building of a
Chinese Model for Digital Elder Education.
Chapter
5. Guangdong and the
Greater Bay Area.
Chapter
6. Guangdong Seniors University (GDOU School of
Continuing Education).
Chapter
7. A System of Educational Policy Support for
Aging with Opportunities in the Digital Society.
Chapter
8. An Empirical
Study in Guangzhou (Canton).
Chapter
9. Major Findings from Field Research:
A Synthesis for Theory and Practice.
Chapter
10. Conclusion.
Siwei Wang, Ph.D. in Education, is a senior lecturer at the Center for Learning Society and School of Social Work at Guangdong Open University (Guangdong Polytechnic Institute). She is a member of the Expert Committee of the Pension Service Industry of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and an expert member of the Children's Service Professional Committee of the National Civil Affairs Vocational Education and Teaching Steering Committee. She has presided over and participated in 15 teaching projects, and 9 research projects at the provincial and national levels (top 3), published 12 papers and 3 textbooks, among other significant contributions. She has won a prize of National Teaching Achievement Award, along with a first prize and a second prize of Guangdong Education and Teaching Achievement Award.
Professor Sheying Chen received his Ph.D. and MSW from UCLA and is a tenured Professor of Public Administration at Pace University in New York. A Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts (2017) and founding director of the Centers for Social Work Study and Social Health Administration at Tsinghua University in Beijing (2016-2019), he has also served as a senior research fellow of Sino-American Relations and Cross-Strait Research at Tsinghua. He was Associate Provost (2010-2012) at Pace and previously Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Indiana University (Southeast). Prior to IU, Dr. Chen was Professor and Dean at University of Guam, overseeing Schools/Colleges of Business & Public Administration; Education; Health Sciences, Nursing & Social Work. He held tenure as Professor and Chair at the City University of New York (Staten Island) where he headed a large unit housing psychology, sociology, anthropology, social work, aging, disability studies, women's studies, and a number of interdisciplinary initiatives. He was a permanent faculty member of Sun Yat-sen University at Guangzhou from 1986 to 1992, where he served as a forerunner of China's rebuilt social work education and public policy research. Professor Chen is the Co-EIC for the Springer Book Series of International Perspectives on Aging.
