Welcome to Life Stories of Older Adults: Insights on Life and Aging
This Open Educational Resource has been designed for use as a stand-alone learning tool, or as part of courses and programs across a variety of disciplines and levels of study. Applications may include courses in: gerontology, public health, sociology, humanities, and more.
At the heart of this resource are eight interviews with older Canadians from a wide range of cultural and social backgrounds. Each interviewee provides reflection on their life experiences, and those events which have been especially shaping for them. Below you will find some short clips of these interviews to give you a sense of what they are about. The full interview for each participant is available on the relevant page of this resource.
In addition to the interviews themselves, we have included a number of suggested discussion questions and activities to help provide educators with some ideas for how to incorporate the interviews into their courses. Each interview page includes a set of interactive reflection prompts, and more ideas for how use this resource as a whole are available on the Discussion and Essay Activities page. Feel free to use all or just some of the interviews in your own teaching and learning–whatever works best for you!
Learning Objectives
By viewing the interviews and completing the suggested reflections and activities in this resource you will be able to:
- identify common themes in the life stories of older adults;
- identify some of the socio-cultural and historical factors that influence how older adults tell their stories;
- describe some of the insights that can be gleaned from the life stories or older adults:
- describe some of your own assumed stereotypes about the aging process and how the life stories of older adults challenge these assumptions;
- reflect on the roles of culture and immigration on the process of aging, and
- create interview guide questions of your own for conducting research on aging adults.
Teaser Videos
Below you will find short selections from each of the interviews in this resource. The full interviews can be found by using the navigation tools in PressBooks or clicking the link below each teaser video.
Dr Jean Skillman
Video Length ~2 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Dr Jean Skillman page.
Dr Shiv Talwar
Video Length ~4 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Dr Shiv Talwar page.
Bahar
Video Length ~6 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Bahar page.
Armend
Video Length ~2 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Armend page.
Ida
Video Length ~1 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Ida page.
Martha S
Video Length ~2 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Martha S page.
Mike
Video Length ~7 min. | The full interview with transcript is available on the Mike page.
Santhanam Rengasamy and Malahty Santhanam
Video Length ~4 min. | The full interview with English translation is available on the Santhanam Rengasamy and Malathy Santhanam page.
