Youngwha Kee

Power and positionality: negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures

Early discussions of insider/outsider status assumed that the researcher was predominately an insider or an outsider and that each status carried with it certain advantages and disadvantages. More recent discussions have unveiled the complexity inherent in either status and have acknowledged that the boundaries between the two positions are not all that clearly delineated. Four case studies - a Black woman interviewing other Black women, Asian graduate students in the US interviewing people from ‘back home’, an African professor learning from African businesswomen, and a cross-cultural team studying aging in a nonWestern culture - are used as the data base to explore the complexities of researching within and across cultures. Positionality, power, and representation proved to be useful concepts for exploring insider/outsider dynamics.

Promoting Community Wellbeing: The Case for Lifelong Learning for Older Adults

Community wellbeing is a function of many factors working in concert to promote an optimal quality of life for all members of a community. It is argued here that the promotion of lifelong learning among older adults can significantly contribute to community wellbeing. The aging society is a worldwide phenomenon presenting both opportunities and challenges to community wellbeing. Research suggests that the more active, healthier, and educated older adults are, the less drain they are on family and community resources and services. At the same time, active and healthy elders contribute to community wellbeing through their accumulated life experience, expertise, and service. The relationship between lifelong learning and community wellbeing is argued from a social capital perspective. This framework contends that formal, nonformal, and informal learning activities of older adults promote an active and engaged lifestyle that helps create and preserve community. Issues of access and opportunity are also addressed.

Does Sense of Community Matter in Community Well-Being?

This paper compares one vibrant grassroots community with its surrounding municipality in relation to subjective community well-being. Nested in Mapo municipality, Sungmisan is a small community formed from active community organizing and strong grassroots civic networks. Sungmisan has similar objective conditions—in terms of local public services, or, objective community well-being—to those of Mapo. Still, survey results show that Sungmisan residents were more satisfied with the local public services available in their community than were the Mapo residents with theirs, suggesting that objective community well-being does not always determine subjective community well-being. Community-level characteristics, such as sense of community, appear to be the most likely differentiating influence. Although sense of community was not established as a significant variable for subjective community well-being for Sungmisan, Sungmisan displayed high community-oriented characteristics, which was strikingly different from those of Mapo.

Modeling Community Well-Being: A Multi-dimensional Approach

This chapter aims to model community well-being as the appropriate value goal for effective local governance. The community well-being model is based on an analysis of related concepts and highlighting the uniqueness of community well-being. It is also connected to community development, defined as both a process and an outcome for achieving community goals.

Educational gerontology in Korea: an interpretive and critical study

Wilma Donahue’s book in 1955, Education for Later Maturity, was considered the first major work to identify the educational needs of the aging person. Peterson considers it one of the earliest comprehensive surveys of older learners. However, the idea of educational gerontology was probably first used in 1970 at the University of Michigan, as the title of a doctoral program dealing principally with education and older people. Although America has been the forerunner of educational gerontology, Korea has formed its own model. The purpose of this article is to interpret and criticize Korean educational gerontology in‐depth from the following aspects: factors influencing Korea’s developing education for senior citizens; the related policy and law issues; practices of implementation; and lastly the distinctive features of Korean educational gerontology, existing problems and suggestions for future development.

Multi-dimensional Model of Community Well-Being from a Public Service Delivery Perspective

This study presents a conceptual approach to building a community well-being model that reflects community well-being theory. At the beginning of the research, the following question was considered – what factors influence citizen well-being in daily life at a community level, and can well-being be fostered by local governments for their citizenry? It was assumed that community is an appropriate level to realize well-being through public service delivery. Well-being has been used interchangeably with quality of life and social well-being to designate social development. Although Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been used to track development and progress, many researchers have discussed limitations of using GDP to measure individual and social progress. Alternative measurements include quality of life, well-being, happiness, and sustainability. Some also criticize these measurements for failing to express local administration and management for citizen well-being at the community level. From this perspective, I have investigated and presented a model for local government service delivery to foster citizen satisfaction and well-being outcomes. Based on what needs to be satisfied through public service delivery for community life, this study develops a multi-dimensional model of community well-being. This study assumes local government as the appropriate level to provide public service delivery to influence both community and individual well-being.

Community Bonding and Community Well-Being: Perspectives from a Community Development Council in Singapore

This chapter examines the role of community development corporations (CDCs) in enhancing community well-being, with case analysis in Singapore. The CDC model provides an interesting experiment in finding ways to revive and recreate community. CDCs’ influence on conceptualization of community well-being is presented, as well as exploring limitations of CDCs in contributing to community well-being.

Community Well-Being Through Intergenerational Cooperation

Intergenerational learning is a form of lifelong learning. A short description of the concept of lifelong learning is included in this chapter in order for intergenerational learning to be more fully understood. Introduction of lifelong learning policies haves many practical consequences for local and regional governments. The first consequence is that lifelong learning dissolves the boundaries between policy sectors. This is because of the fact that lifelong learning concerns such sectors as education policy, labour market policy, industrial policy as well as social policy. The second consequence is a shift in responsibility for education and learning from the public to the private and civil spheres. The case of an intergenerational learning program in Sweden is presented in this chapter.

Community Learning and Self-generated Communities of Practice: The Case of Jangheung School

The purpose of this study is to answer the following question: how are self-generated communities of practice formed? We search for answers in a case study of Jangheung Hakdang, a community learning initiative in Jeollanamdo, South Korea, which began as a personal hobby of a retired high-ranking government official and grew into a local community of practice. Research methodology included document analysis, in-depth interviews and participatory observation. We identified four phases in the formation of this self-generated community of practice: the germination period, institution building period, participation and growth period, maturation and sustained growth period. Furthermore, our findings highlighted the following factors for a successful community of practice: a dedicated leader, voluntary participation and contribution of members, and inclusion of a wide variety of community members.