What is it about?
Using qualitative interviews, focus groups, storytelling and collective journaling, the life experiences of people in a local village community, in South Westphalia, Germany, born between 1930 and 1945, were analysed collaboratively. The research intention was to give the younger generations in that region access to these experiences and insights, within the context of democratic learning and civic education. The focus of this narrative learning project was on the politically relevant issues and themes they contained, above all: the significance of free information and thought, a free cultural life, access to education for all children and youth, a self-determined life for women and girls, as well as cohesion and self-help structures in the social community. Many tales were shared from the Third Reich, making references to Wilhelmine Germany and the Republic of Weimar, including how these times had been narrated to them through their forebearers and families’ archives.
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Why is it important?
Aging people have a lot to share with the younger generations when looking at the political dimensions of their life stories.
Perspectives
It was very important for me that this article was included into the publisher´s Gold Open Access program, so that everybody around the world has free access to this work and can download the text for free. Based on the documented study with older adults in a South Westphalian village, we now plan a larger study in the same rural region, once again using a life history approach, qualitative interviews, focus groups, storytelling and collective journaling. This time we plan to include not only one larger family into the research but the whole village and the ca. 20 other villages of that region as well. The research intention is to give the younger generations in that region access to these experiences and insights, within the context of democratic learning and civic education. To reach this goal the plan is to connect with local schools and present the older participants´ findings to teachers and classrooms.
Professor Joachim Broecher
University of Flensburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Rediscovering the political dimension of the personal life story: results from an intergenerational narrative learning project with older adults in South Westphalia, International Journal of Lifelong Education, February 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2017.1285361.
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