Adapting Good Practice from Europe

Chris Ring, Senior Lecturer from the Division of Social Work and Professional Practice, discusses his experience in Barcelona and how this influenced his work at Nottingham Trent University.

"My Erasmus-funded visit to Barcelona last year included an intriguing example of co-production by older people of a documentary based on the history of a village in Catalonia.

"Nine months later, teaching a small cohort of social work students at Master's level in Nottingham about the adult life course, this offered an ideal opportunity to adapt this approach to provide them with an experience of intergenerational learning.

"Working in partnership with older residents of Larkhill Retirement Village, in Clifton, we made a video using their photographs to illustrate (as in the Spanish example) "How Life has Changed", published (with participants consent).

"Research from the US suggests that "In-service" learning of this type has considerable advantages over more conventional methods of teaching social work students about ageing and work with older people, so next year I hope to evaluate this approach in the UK context."

Chris Ring
Senior Lecturer, Division of Social Work and Professional Practice