The Professional Profile of Intergenerational Program Managers: General and Specific Characteristics

Ageless play: Sustaining intergenerational playgroup programmes

“…The importance of the facilitator is noted within the literature regarding playgroups (Williams et al, 2016), and more specifically that which explore intergenerational playgroups (Williams et al, 2012). It is not enough to simply bring generations together; those employed to assist, facilitate, or lead have an important role to support meaningful interaction (Sánchez et al, 2014). A commonality between both playgroups’ sites in this research, is that there was more than one aged care employee supporting this work and at times the playgroups also welcomed volunteers: interested community members, students on placement, and/or the families of the older people attending.…”

Emotional Competencies of Preschool Teachers as Predictors of Intergenerational Learning in Kindergarten

“…It is necessary to improve and strengthen the communication skills of experts in the field of intergenerational work [35]. Ličen [27], studying practical knowledge related to more than 50 intergenerational learning projects, observes that some of the most important project strategies are based on narrative methods, and the project topics and outcomes are socio-emotional in the domain of solidarity, communication, dialogue, relationships, emotional intelligence etc.…”

“…Aday et al [36] identified three factors that facilitators should strive for in order to achieve successful intergenerational contact between the elderly and young people, namely: encouraging conversation (communication), gaining mutual experiences and knowing specifics of the second generation. Sánchez et al [35] observe that the skills essential for the manager of intergenerational programs relate to the organizational and social areas. On the one hand, the leader must have abilities and competencies related to teamwork, observation, contextual analysis, and resource management.…”

“…Two self-created instruments with a five-point Likert-type scale prepared in an online version were used in the research. The authors operationalized and adapted the theoretical foundations of the construct of intergenerational learning [16], [35], [40] taking into account the specifics of the kindergarten context and educators' profession. An instrument on the perception of educators on intergenerational learning in the kindergarten was constructed from 42 statements [41] while in the procedure of factor and reliability analysis on the sample of preschool teachers from Slovenia, the number of statements was reduced to 21 [30].…”

“…The first regression model of this study (Table 1) indicates that the predictor adaptability, which implies the preschool teacher's adaptation to the new situation, children, innovations, and individual needs, and includes flexibility, accessibility, openness, and responsiveness contributes to the reduction of challenges present in intergenerational interactions. Similarly, Sánchez et al [35] note the importance of promoting contacts, social relations, interactions, and connections during intergenerational activities, and Mosor, et al [37] indicate the need to facilitate intergenerational interaction.…”