Education and Learning of Older Adults

Goals and themes of the network

The purpose of the network “Education and Learning of Older Adults” (ELOA) is to bring together researchers and research activities in this field in Europe and beyond, and to establish an arena for a regular sharing and exchange of research topics, findings and experiences, as well as current trends in policy and practice through network conferences and other events. ELOA will both stimulate and strengthen European research and research collaboration and joint projects regarding learning and education of older adults.

The ELOA-network has four main goals:

1. to add visibility to the research on learning and education of older adults in Europe, on issues pertaining to all kind of learning activities in formal, informal, and non-formal contexts, and the broad impact of these learning processes;
2. to provide an arena for dissemination of findings from current European research projects and stimulate new, joint research in this field;
3. to share policy and practice on lifelong learning in the second half of the lifespan in Europe and beyond;
4. to foster a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary dialogue on lifelong learning, its importance and meaning in later life.

As ELOA addresses lifelong and lifewide learning of older adults, a wide range of topics and issues is covered. The following list is not meant to be exhaustive: participation of older adults in adult learning, education, and training; educational interests and learning preferences in later life; the consequences of workforce ageing on human resources and continuous development of skills and competence; older workers’ access to and interest in continuing education and training; meaning of work and working conditions for learning processes of older workers; learning and socio-cognitive development of older adults; intergenerational learning; motivation of older adults to participate in learning, education, and training; design of educational courses and programs for older adults (didactics, andragogy); the perspectives of gender, socioeconomic conditions, and lifestyle on learning interests and participation of older adults; informal learning in later life; meaning and consequences of age perceptions for the learning of older adults; comparative perspective to conditions for and practice of learning in older age in Europe and beyond; digitalization and ageing; online learning of and for older adults, and; older adults’ perceptions of and challenges with artificial intelligence.

History of the network

The ELOA network was founded in 2009 by Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha (Munich), Tarja Tikkanen (Stavanger), and Leif Emil Hansen (Roskilde) under the roof of ESREA. ELOA has been organizing annual conferences since 2010. Members of the network come from all over Europe, but also from outside (for example from Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Network conferences have taken place in Munich (2010), Braga (2011), Ljubljana (2012), Vilnius (2013), Malta (2014), Jonköping (2015), Wroclaw (2016), Leeds (2017), Faro (2018), Digital conference (2021), Tallinn (2023), and Alsace (2025).

In 2017 the network was invited to a study tour to Australia and New Zealand, which was organized by colleagues from Ballarat, Melbourne, and Waikato. 15 colleagues from Europe joined the 8-days-program, including three one-day-conferences.