Inspiriting Togetherness to Omit the Divide between Generations and Encourage different Ways of Knowing.

• In Event: Virtual Roundtable Session 2
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: It Takes a Community: Education, Culture, and Collective Resilience in Conflict and Recovery Settings

Proposal

This study explores whether the divide between generations can be bridged by encouraging intergenerational collaborations, helping adolescents and senior citizens curb the generational communication gap and foster meaningful social relationships through storytelling. Storytelling, one of the ancient forms of art, describes the sharing of narratives highlighting the profound individual human experiences and their social/cultural contexts. Storytelling involves oral sharing of personal and collective memories of lived experiences. Studies have found that storytelling has benefitted people by having positively changed attitudes, increased community involvement and gained a renewed sense of perspective (Hausknecht et. al, 2021). Some of the different ways of imparting education are formal, informal and cultural transmission (Little et al., 2014). Apart from receiving formal education in schools, young people require informal guidance to be a contributing part of society and build a community. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an epidemic of social isolation, where adolescents and senior citizens experienced more social isolation and social disconnectedness (Houghton et al., 2022). A pressing issue facing seniors in Canada is keeping older people socially connected(Bureau, G et al., 2017).
This research will apply a qualitative interventionist approach to focus on the lived experiences of the young and older generations using a phenomenological design. Through an interventionist approach, seniors and adolescents will have informal weekly one-on-one sessions over six months, facilitated by guiding themes for each week in community centres or conference rooms of retirement homes to make simple art and share their stories. The naturalistic observation method will be used to observe participants in their natural settings, and the participants will be videotaped. These collaborations would have participants from different families, backgrounds, cultures and races. This study will investigate intergenerational collaboration from a social lens.
Based on Laura Carstensen’s Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), a theory of life-span development grounded in the uniquely human ability to monitor time, this study aims to harness the unique ability of enhanced problem-solving skills in the ageing population (Carstensen et al., 2016). The theory accounted for high levels of satisfaction and emotional well-being observed in elderly populations despite apparent losses and challenges that come with age (Blazer and Hybels, 2014). Privileging present-oriented goals over future-oriented goals is associated with positive emotional experience, appreciation, and gratitude, all of which contribute to psychological well-being and when emotionally meaningful goals are prioritised, emotional well-being improves. Ageing relieves people of the burden of preparing for the future and allows them to be more present-focused. The theory maintains that constraints on future time horizons motivate age differences in social preferences, selective deployment of cognitive resources, and engagement in prosocial behaviours, all of which subsequently benefit subjective experience. Hence, this study would be a chance for young people to harness the knowledge and experiences of the elderly for developing meaningful social relationships and at the same time bridge the generational divide created over decades of globalisation and Covid COVID-19 pandemic.

Author

• Ashika Ashika, McGill University