Silver ecosystem of education for the benefit of the older generation

The era of longevity, which characterizes many countries, including Russia, requires a revision of ageing and the role of the elderly in society. The idea of the older cohort of the population as passive beneficiaries, creating an additional burden on the labor market, social services, and health care systems, is gradually replaced by a more inclusive approach based on the principles of active ageing, empowerment for the elderly and their social integration. One of the ways to respond to the challenges of ageing societies are educational programs for the elderly, which can provide the older cohort with necessary knowledge, skills and competencies, thus strengthening its human potential. The article focuses on the development of a theoretical framework for the analysis of education for the elderly in Russia, i.e., “silver ecosystem” of educational programs for the elderly, which is reconstructed from the works of U. Bronfenbrenner and the structuralist-­constructivist approach. Following the logic of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, the authors consider education for the elderly as a number of interconnected subsystems with an emphasis on actors at different levels, contributing to social development and well-­being of this social group. The structural-­constructivist approach allows to analyze education for the elderly in the context of power and inequality and as a field in which resources are unevenly distributed. The authors apply the new conceptual framework to the regional policy analysis to reveal bonds, boundaries and multidirectional processes at different levels of the “silver ecosystem”, which determine contradictions between ideals of the older generation’s active social involvement and the uneven distribution of resources for social integration of the older generation.