One can learn new things at any age – it isn’t just possible but it’s vital for a good quality of life. As societies around the world grow older, the demand for effective lifelong learning is increasing.
It can boost memory, emotional well-being, and even a sense of purpose.
Now, a new study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) shows that seniors learn best when they’re taught the same way that is best for children and younger adults – with active participation, meaningful discussions, and material that feels relevant to their lives.
The study, titled “Bridging geragogy [specialized educational theory and practice focused on teaching older adults] and pedagogy: Towards a learning-sciences-based approach to older adults’ education,” was published in the journal Educational Gerontology by Prof. Anat Zohar of HUJI’s Seymour Fox School of Education and Dr. Yochai Shavit of the Stanford Center on Longevity.
The findings stress that the common method of lecture-based learning that has been used for many years in colleges and universities does not fit older adults’ characteristics because it requires good memory. The new research builds on an earlier study led by the same team, which found that older women actually learned better as they got older.
The researchers argue that older adulthood is a rich and meaningful stage of life, and education can help people stay mentally sharp, emotionally fulfilled, and socially connected.
Zohar was the director of Pedagogical Affairs in the Education Ministry, where she led pedagogical reform aimed at teaching schoolchildren deep understanding and developing their higher order thinking throughout the curricula. She told The Jerusalem Post in an interview that in the future, she and her team plan to study highly educated men, as well as less-educated people of both genders, to see if there are any differences in their preferences for learning and benefits from lectures.
How the industrial revolution drove class teaching
FRONTAL LECTURES before large classes began early in history, and became abundant during the Industrial Revolution. She noted that the traditional Jewish method of hevruta – studying texts, especially Talmud, in pairs (with a “study buddy”) based on deep, collaborative discussion, questioning, and debate instead of frontal lectures – is a good example of the way the elderly should also be taught.
“During my whole career, I worked under the motto that more thinking and less memorization were needed, but unfortunately active, thinking-based education is still the exception rather than the rule,” Zohar said. “Except for kindergarten and early elementary education where teaching is more experiential, most schooling is still based on lectures, memorization and passive learning. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well, especially in older people, even those who do not suffer from physical diseases or dementia but have a weaker memory.
“When asked what they learned from a frontal lecture, they often don’t retain very much,” the geragogy expert said. “So why do they go – and pay for the privilege? They want to leave their home and meet people. What they need are opportunities to bring their life experiences and ideas to the learning experience, to be active.”
Although programs for older adults have become more common, many rely heavily on passive learning rather than on research-based methods. An enormous industry worth many millions of dollars per year, it presents courses for older adults based primarily on lectures, despite growing evidence that this approach is not suited to their needs.
The HUJI professor bemoaned the fact that the quality of teaching methods for older adults is “not discussed in Israel. “Lecture series are a huge industry, but they often don’t involve active participation, meaningful discussions, and material that’s relevant to the learners’ lives,” Zohar said. “High-quality, active learning can support cognitive abilities, promote health, and even contribute to longer lives.”
In the US alone, continuing education that includes post-school courses, adult programs, vocational training, and professional development was estimated to cost about $67 billion in 2024, and is expected to grow to $96 billion by 2030. Yet a significant portion of this money is still invested in traditional lecture formats that are not in tune with how older adults learn best.
Her first study was based on interviews with 19 women aged between 60 and 81 who hold either a doctorate or master’s degree. The team chose to conduct the present study on highly-educated women because of the assumption that they would demonstrate examples of “best practice” learning for senior women.
It showed that – in contrast to common stereotypes – these women felt they were learning better than at any earlier time in their lives. They reported better understanding because they could connect new knowledge to previous knowledge and experiences. The results challenged common assumptions about aging and showed that the right learning conditions can help older adults thrive.
“We’re teaching older adults the wrong way,” said Zohar. “The dominant model is still the lecture, but it is built on assumptions that simply don’t hold for older learners. First, it relies heavily on memorization, even though memory is the very ability that tends to decline with age. Second, it rarely connects new ideas to the rich knowledge and life experience older adults already have – one of their greatest learning resources. And third, lectures rarely create the meaningful, relevant learning and relationships that drive motivation in later life.”
The gerugogist said that cognition of older women is reflected in our culture in two contradictory images – one of the “wise old woman,” whose accumulated experiences and insights allow her to impart knowledgeable advice of a unique quality, and the other of a confused, senile and slow thinker, with deteriorating cognitive abilities.
To avoid these views, we need to do research. While numerous studies measure older people’s cognitive abilities in the lab using psychological tests or brain-research tools, far fewer examine how older people’s cognition functions in the reality of the complex environment of their daily life.
'Seniors deserve to be taught in a way that will fulfil their learning needs'
“OLDER ADULTHOOD is a time of real psychological depth,” Shavit said. “When education taps into older adults’ motivations, like the search for meaning, connection, and self-understanding, it becomes not just effective, but deeply rewarding. Seniors deserve to be taught in a way that will fulfil their learning needs.”
Shelly, an 80-year-old retired biology teacher and department chair, is one of the oldest participants in this study. “I don’t know why I don’t take these courses, but I do feel that I would have liked to study more biology. I read a lot. I try to read as much as I can,” she said. “I think what is happening today in the areas of human genome and DNA research is amazing, and that compared to my previous knowledge, my view of these issues is much deeper now.”
Miriam, a school principal who retired two years ago, is now taking two long-term courses to prepare herself to work in areas that are totally new to her – rehabilitation sports and investment consultancy.
“This course of rehabilitation sports has lots of things about anatomy, the structure of the skeleton, and so on,” she said. “I think that in the past, my ability to memorize things and to remember them well was better than today. Today, when I review the vertebrates in the spine, the bones, and the muscles, I need to repeat them over and over again so that it will enter my brain. I don’t need to know the name of each bone – but I think that my ability to skim the material, to skip, to see it as an entity – even if it’s not each and every detail – has improved.”
As for compensation mechanisms used by the elderly who want to learn, one way is improving learning strategies with age, while another is concentrating on general principles rather than on the details. A third is the use of digital technology; the participants were shown how to be digitally literate and to use it routinely for many purposes.