I Learn, Therefore I am: A Phenomenological Analysis of Meanings of Lifelong Learning for Vulnerable Older Adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Objectives: This study explores the lifelong learning experience of vulnerable older adults to find out (a) what is involved in their activities, (b) what meanings they take from their learning, and (c) how participation in a learning program helps to maintain their well-being and independent living despite their daily challenges. Research Design and Methods: This study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. As part of a larger study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with older learners enrolled in general interest courses at a public continuing education program. In this study, we particularly focused on 10 vulnerable participants (8 women and 2 men, aged from 70 to 90), and analyzed their accounts following van Manen's (2014) guided existential inquiry method. After the inductive thematic analysis, we clustered the overarching themes into five existentials (lived-body, lived-relation, lived-space, lived-time, and lived-material) to explicate the meanings of their lived experience of learning. Results: The meanings of learning found in the five existential aspects included: (a) assurance for the dissonant body and mind; (b) a circle of camaraderie; (c) a balance between physical and mental spaces; (d) integration of past, present, and future; and (e) beyond knowledge and skills. Participants' continuous practice of learning works as a therapeutic self-help mechanism to counterbalance changes in their lifeworlds. Discussion and Implications: The findings contribute to the growing body of evidence of the wider benefits of lifelong learning and its crucial role in well-being and health among aging populations. Governments at all levels should take full advantage of these benefits.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".