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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1384527

Linking personal initiative and family help as well as social support: A case study of learning challenges and solutions for older adults in rural China during the COVID-19 pandemic

Provisionally accepted
  • School of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic has caused serious damage to the continuous learning of older adults around the world. While the existing literature focused more on older adults' learning in developed countries, few studies explored older adults' learning in developing countries with low social and cultural capital. Methods: This study took family-school cooperation in China as the platform and explored learning challenges and solutions through unstructured interviews with 12 older adults.The study found that due to policies of working and studying from home, older adults face obstacles in accessing physical learning institutions and digital learning knowledge, skills, and psychology. I further found that the older adults were not forced to accept the challenge passively, but created a lifelong learning model with Chinese characteristics by building self-learning based on personal initiative, developing sustainable intergenerational learning rooted in Chinese family culture, and participating in online learning in schools and enterprises under the government guidance.This study provided new knowledge for understanding the learning challenges and solutions of older adults in rural China. It is emphasized that policy value and practice enlightenment were highlighted and discussed in conversations with active aging, intergenerational learning, and harmonious societies.

    Keywords: the COVID-19 pandemic, Aging Population, educational gerontology, Self-directed learning, intergenerational learning, Online Education

    Received: 12 Feb 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Cheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hao Cheng, School of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, Hubei Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.