Incorporating Intergenerational Service-Learning into an Introductory Gerontology Course

Summary

The service-learning approach in education, which integrates community service with academic classroom learning, is gaining national prominence. The goals of this project were to incorporate intergenerational service-learning into an undergraduate introductory gerontology course and to involve students and elders in meaningful in-teractions in a rural community setting. Thirteen of the 50 students in the class could be accommodated at nursing home and semi-independent living sites and were paired with elders for friendly visiting and oral history. Attitude scales (Pillemer & Albright, 1996) indicated that service-learning students showed more positive change at post-test in overall attitudes toward the elderly than did non service-learning students. Open-ended questions indicated that students valued the experience, felt it enhanced classroom learning, and gained knowledge about rural elders and communities. Follow-up interviews with elders were uniformly positive.

Key Words:

• Gerontology education
• intergenerational
• nursing homes
• rural elders
• service-learning