Abstract
Purpose of the Study
Given the policy shifts toward extended work lives, it is critically important to address barriers that older workers may face in attaining and maintaining satisfactory ...work. This article presents a scoping review of research addressing ageism and its implications for the employment experiences and opportunities of older workers.
Design and Methods
The five-step scoping review process outlined by Arksey and O’Malley was followed. The data set included 43 research articles.
Results
The majority of articles were cross-sectional quantitative surveys, and various types of study participants (older workers, human resource personnel/manager, employers, younger workers, undergraduate students) were included. Four main themes, representing key research emphases, were identified: stereotypes and perceptions of older workers; intended behavior toward older workers; reported behavior toward older workers; and older workers’ negotiation of ageism.
Implications
Existing research provides a foundational evidence base for the existence of ageist stereotypes and perceptions about older workers and has begun to demonstrate implications in relation to intended behaviors and, to a lesser extent, actual behaviors toward older workers. A few studies have explored how aging workers attempt to negotiate ageism. Further research that extends beyond cross-sectional surveys is required to achieve more complex understandings of the implications of ageism and inform policies and practices that work against ageism.
Abstract Within contemporary Western contexts, positive aging discourses are a key aspect of structured mandates for how to think about and act toward aging bodies. This study adds to previous work ...on embodiment that has situated how aging bodies are managed by focusing on the body as an aspect of retirement preparation, and critically considering how the imperative to govern the aging body in ways consistent with being a ‘good’ neoliberal citizen circulated through positive aging discourses is negotiated by aging individuals. Utilizing narrative data from a study addressing the discursive re-shaping and narrative negotiation of retirement within the Canadian context conducted with 30 informants aged 45 to 83, this paper draws upon a governmentality perspective to critically analyze ways informants talked about their aging bodies as part of preparing for and moving into retirement. Overall, the findings illustrate how informants embodied positive aging discourses and, in turn, embodied neoliberal rationality particularly in taking up the call to attend to the body as part of the broadening of retirement planning within a neoliberal context in which health, social, financial and other responsibilities are increasingly shifted toward individuals. Although informants described realizing some of the promises offered up with positive aging discourses, such as a sense of youthfulness and bodily control, their narratives also point to detrimental individual and social implications that can arise out of the limits of bodily practices, the need for perpetual risk management, an aversion to oldness, and attributions of failure. As such, this study raises concerns about the implications of the intersections of positive aging discourses and the neoliberal agenda of activation, responsibilization and individualization.
Over the past decade, many occupational science scholars have emphasized the critical potential of occupational science; that is, its capacity to generate knowledge to inform practices that work ...against occupational inequities. Within this lecture, previously articulated concerns regarding the 'individualizing of occupation' within occupational science are politicized, by placing them within the broader 'individualizing of the social' that is associated with neoliberalism and related socio-political transformations. This broader 'individualizing of the social', which has involved configuring various social problematics as individual concerns and responsibilities within an array of social policies, discourses and practices, obscures the economic, political and other social factors that shape inequities in possibilities for work, retirement, education, leisure and other occupations. Working against such inequities requires problematizing the 'individualizing of occupation', within and outside of occupational science, and situating occupation within economic, political and other types of social forces. Drawing upon on-going research addressing the contemporary re-construction of retirement and later life work, I argue that critically examining how occupational possibilities are constructed in ways that align with broader socio-political forces, as well as how they are actively negotiated by individuals and collectives, provides a valuable way forward in enacting the critical potential of occupational science.
Abstract
Background and Objectives
Given population aging, the meaningful involvement of older adults in influencing policy and programs through participatory action research (PAR) is increasingly ...vital. PAR holds promise for equitable participation, co-learning, community mobilization, and personal and social transformation, however, little scholarly attention has been given to critically evaluating how PAR has been taken up with older adults. The objective of this review was to critically evaluate the use of PAR with older adults.
Research Design and Methods
A critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) of 40 PAR studies with older adults was conducted. Critical engagement with the articles identified dominant tendencies, limits of these tendencies, and proposed ways forward.
Results
Within the majority of articles reviewed, older adults were not prominent partners in PAR given their often limited involvement in designing the research questions, learning research skills and knowledge, and implementing findings for change. Furthermore, power differentials between researchers and older adults were evident, as older adults were often positioned as participants rather than partners. Finally, this article demonstrates various boundaries on the foci of studies related to inclusivity and sustainability.
Discussion and Implications
This study revealed that the promises PAR holds are often not fully realized in projects with older adults, given that they are rarely positioned as equitable partners, co-learners, or agents for change. The findings have the potential to stimulate further uptake of PAR research with an older adult population, highlighting areas for change in systems and research practices.
This paper addresses the question of how occupational science can move forward in its development as a socially and politically engaged discipline. It is argued that a transformative approach to ...scholarship needs to be embraced, and that enacting such an approach requires a radical reconfiguration of the sensibility underpinning occupational science. After reviewing the key defining characteristics of a transformative paradigmatic approach, key insights regarding how to foster a radical sensibility in occupational science are drawn from C. Wright Mills' (1959) conceptualization of 'the sociological imagination'. Embracing an occupational imagination premised on these key insights would foster the transformative potential of occupational science by providing a sensibility that challenges scholars to make critical, creative connections between the personal, occupational 'troubles' of individuals and public 'issues' related to historical and social forces. Five key areas of action crucial to moving forward in cultivating an 'occupational imagination' are outlined, including: pushing beyond the limits of dualistic thinking; attending to the socio-political nature of occupation; addressing the moral and political values that shape and energize occupational science work; questioning the familiar and exploring the unfamiliar; and, engaging in innovative interdisciplinary syntheses.
Abstract
Within research on ageing in neighbourhoods, older adults are often positioned as impacted by neighbourhood features; their impact on neighbourhoods is less often considered. Drawing on a ...study exploring how person and place transact to shape older adults’ social connectedness, inclusion and engagement in neighbourhoods, this paper explores how older adults take action in efforts to create neighbourhoods that meet individual and collective needs and wants. We drew on ethnographic and community-based participatory approaches and employed qualitative and geospatial methods with 14 older adults in two neighbourhoods. Analysis identified three themes that described the ways that older adults enact agency at the neighbourhood level:
being present and inviting casual social interaction
,
helping others
and
taking community action
. The participants appeared to contribute to a collective sense of connectedness and creation of social spaces doing everyday neighbourhood activities and interacting with others. Shared territories in which others were present seemed to support such interactions. Participants also helped others in a variety of ways, often relating to gaps in services and support, becoming neighbourhood-based supports for other seniors. Finally, participants contributed to change at the community level, such as engaging politically, patronising local businesses and making improvements in public places. Study findings suggest the potential benefits of collaborating with older adults to create and maintain liveable neighbourhoods.
An emancipatory agenda is emerging within occupational science, building on the work of scholars who have advocated for a more critical, reflexive and socially responsive discipline. Although several ...analyses of the discipline's genesis and underpinning paradigms have been presented and there has been an increasing use of critical approaches in recent publications, little is known about how critical perspectives have been taken up in the occupational science literature. This study presents a critical interpretive synthesis, a methodology that enables synthesis of large amounts of diverse qualitative data and facilitates critical engagement with the assumptions that shape and inform a body of research. The study included articles published between 1996 and 2013 in the Journal of Occupational Science that implicitly or explicitly took up critical perspectives. It was conducted in relation to questions regarding: (a) how "critical" has been defined in this literature and (b) how critical perspectives are being utilized to inform occupational science. In addition to describing three "turns" in how critical perspectives have and are being employed, this article discusses the implications of these results in relation to the aim of developing as a socially responsive discipline.
Background: As stroke can result in functional impairments that impact driving ability, many jurisdictions mandate a 30-day period of driving restriction post-stroke. However, between 26% and 38% of ...clients drive against medical advice during this period. Purpose: Informed by critical reflexivity of the literature and the first author's practice, this critical analysis paper (1) explicates and critiques how adherence to guidelines regarding driving after stroke in the first 30 days is conceptualized in individualistic, biomedically centred research and (2) argues for expanded understandings of driving based on a transactional occupational perspective. Key Issues: Individualistic, biomedical perspectives view driving against medical advice as an individually located phenomenon, generating partial understandings and individually focused solutions. Re-conceptualizing driving after stroke as a transactional occupational choice provides a productive basis for understanding and addressing driving within practice and research. Implications: Concepts from occupational science can generate new insights for research and client-centred practice regarding driving following stroke.
This occupational terminology interactive dialogue outlines a construct that I have been developing since my doctoral work. Writing this paper has provided me with an opportunity to reflect on how ...the construct of 'occupational possibilities' has evolved, and how it provides a particular lens to examine transactions between structure and agency in the shaping of occupation at individual and collective levels. As such, this construct fits within the growing body of work in occupational science exploring theoretical and methodological approaches to addressing the 'situated' nature of occupation; that is, how occupation is shaped, embedded and negotiated within, as well as how it contributes to the shaping of, social systems and structures (Cutchin, Aldrich, Luc Ballaird, & Coppola, 2008; Dickie, Cutchin, & Humphry, 2006; Hocking, 2000; Phelan & Kinsella, 2009). Within this paper, after providing a description of the construct of occupational possibilities, I address its theoretical underpinnings within the governmentality perspective and raise questions and examples to illustrate its potential usefulness to further understanding of occupation as a situated phenomenon.
Despite a recognition of religion as a resource for coping in later life, few studies have examined how religion is summoned to cope with the stressors of late-life immigration. Drawing upon data ...generated in a phenomenological study of the aging-out-place experience, this article presents a hermeneutic analysis of textual extracts addressing 10 Sri Lankan-born late-life immigrants’ Buddhist beliefs and practices, and how these beliefs and practices contributed to coping with immigration stressors. Four shared experiences facilitated through religious engagement were revealed: religious engagement as a source of purpose, making meaning of suffering and experiencing hope, non-attachment, and connecting to the past and the ethnoreligious community. Late-life immigrants drew on religious engagement to remain resolute amidst adversities, thus reinforcing the importance of culturally responsive milieus and services to support religion-focused coping. Findings are interpreted in relation to Pargament’s (1997) theory of religious coping.
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