Engaging students and elders in social justice research and action: Progressive pedagogy beyond the classroom

Critical gerontology explores how the intersections of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation and ability/disability help shape and determine the experience of aging and later life. It underscores, too, the centrality of power and privilege in understanding aging processes and outcomes. Yet our best teachers in this field are not learned scholars but elders themselves, and particularly those from marginalized groups. This paper will briefly describe three diverse efforts to engage graduate students with elders in community organizing, community- engaged research, and a state wide, elder-driven social action effort to help improve the lives of elders in need while building on their considerable strengths. The paper highlights (1) a 16 year project promoting elder organizing in San Francisco's single room occupancy hotels (2) a three year collaborative research and action project, with and by grandmothers raising grandchildren in the crack cocaine epidemic and (3) the genesis and work of the California Senior Leaders Alliance, a statewide social justice organization through which elders from predominantly marginalized communities work for policy change. The role students may play in such efforts, and the primacy of elders' roles, particularly in developing and moving a social justice agenda, are emphasized. Recommendations for working collaboratively with elders in such learning communities also are stressed.