This paper places a critical perspective on the concept of ‘active aging’ using biographical research as a reconciliation within the normative discourse in elder education. Active ageing expects us to be active concerning our health and fitness as well as our wish to learn even in later life or working voluntarily. Not just in Europe the population is living longer. So it is not surprising that dealing with and integrating older people in society is also on the political agenda of the European countries (c.f. Principi/Lamura/Jensen 2014: 315). For instance, the European Commission contracted a Special Eurobarometer to the subject of active ageing in 2012. The concept focuses on the third age as an active way of life from which society can benefit. However, this positive image of age only functions in the distinction from the fourth age, which describes the group of the oldest old. Talking about those, we still associate societal challenges and threats. Age(ing) does not exist without social addressing. How we, as individuals and as society, perceive age(ing) depends on interactions with others, public debates, political discourses, media staging and visibilities and with historical developments. Those who are no active agers are increasingly embedded in discourses about care, degradation processes and diseases. In brief, we focus the deficits.

In the light of an educational studies perspective, we can see the concepts of active ageing and lifelong learning in a context. Lifelong learning addresses adults as active individuals, who want to learn and to be active. Nevertheless, high aged adults (fourth age), marginally take place in educational studies or theoretical discourses. It might be, that this normative point of view excludes those elderly people from educational contexts, because we draw an arbitrary line between young (constructed as active) olds and the oldest (constructed as inactive) olds.

Biographical studies in education are particularly profitable for educational-/forming and learning processes in later life, which are much less embedded in institutional frameworks. Bettina Dausien (2002: 87) points out, that “the term biographical learning […] attempts to avoid normative definitions ex ante and proceeds from the perspective of the subject that is forming itself”. The biography of very old adults includes memories, experiences and decisions from childhood, adolescence and from a long adulthood. Furthermore, the biography is more than the ‘already lived life’ “das noch zu lebende Leben” (Schulze 2010: 423). The current and the future life are still part of the biography and life is still designable.  

Thus, experiences, coping strategies and emotions concerning later life are part of the biography as well as the experienced life and future perspectives. And this future perspective is becoming more urgent by the awareness of the nearing end of one’s own existence (c.f. Rothe 2018: 145). This can also be accompanied by a generative perspective, a biography beyond one's own life: What do I want to leave behind and how do I perceive world and changes without myself and my body?

Age and ageing are not just biological facts, but how we construct the oldest old, age differences und what kind of attributes we ascribe to people we perceive as oldest adults, become reality through action and perception (c.f. Schroeter 2012: 161). Übersetzung in Englisch.  The research interest is based on an educational question, i.e. how elderly adults biographize their own high age in an educational significant way? How are they doing their biography? How is ageing experienced and constructed biographically? Which self and societal image of age can be reconstructed? In summary: What happens to the oldest old and their sense of self, of others and of the world as they age?

Based on the assumption that old age is a social construction produced communicatively and performatively in interactions, narrative inquiry is an access to the transformative learning processes in later life and within the life story. Nancy Lloyd Pfahl (2011: 69) emphasizes this method by postulating, that it “has the power to bring the meanings of the participants’ individual stories into a broader context, transforming both the participants as co-researchers and their interpretations of the stories”. I use the narrative-biographical inquiry method (‘narratives Interview’ Schütze 1983), that is well established within biographical studies in education. On the one hand the experience in later life presents itself in narration, in socialization and as a ‘biographical development’ "biographische Gewordenheit" (Schütze 2014: 124). On the other hand, it is a construction within the interview situation itself, in which language, body and embodiment, movement, temporality, staging and performativity are mixed by the persons (participant and researcher) speaking and acting. From that perspective, the interview situation and location will be analysed as well. These are captured by detailed postscripts inspired by ethnographical field notes. The decision of the participant about where they want to be interviewed is a statement that invites the researcher to see who the person is and who the participant wants to present themselves as. This kind of interview setting I would like to call the staging of the space according to the performative character in “doing biography” (Dausien/Kelle 2005: 206). The interpretation concerning biographical learning is based on Heide von Felden’s (2014) method, which focus the individual and social dimensions within the biographical construction, the relationships, space and interaction and timing as well as the analysis of the sense of self, of others and of the world. “Mapping age” as a method can also be used to reconstruct practices and experiences of ageing (Wanka/Oswald 2020: 79). The participants were acquired through various institutions and senior groups. Only those people who described themselves as ‘oldest old’ were selected. This means that there is no numerical limit of age, so that ‘oldest old’ is determined as little as possible in a normative way. Rather, a participatory definition of it takes place through the sampling. Currently, the sample is about 12 Interviews (m=3 | w=9) with participants of the birth cohorts from 1922 to 1940.

A case study will be used as an example to discuss transformational learning and forming in later life. Furthermore, it will also be shown how the text (narration) and the acting (interaction, bodyfication, performativity and movements) can be interpreted together and provide information about everyday practices in ageing. In addition, the case study shows the extent to which biographical work is beneficial for the oldest old – far removed from discussions about active aging. The question is therefore whether we as human beings must be active until the end and whether only active aging can also be successful aging? We need to question what being active means and how we can reach out from an educational perspective to activity beyond a political agenda. To reflect on these perspectives, this paper can be a good contribution.

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