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Home > Activities > Committees >Teaching (1999-2001) > Programme Outline

Programme Outline - Working Group on Teaching

Mandate of the Working Group on Teaching

Demography, as with other disciplines that focus on population studies, belongs to the social sciences and paradigms change in step with changes in society. Major changes during this latter part of the century, disclosing new vistas for the third millennium, should serve to encourage the scientific community to seriously consider the future of teaching in this area.

Demographers over the last decades, accustomed to transmitting knowledge on phenomena and problems which seemed to change slowly, have largely focused on measures on how to adapt ever more sophisticated methodologies to the analysis of the issues at hand. Only rarely have other disciplines been approached, has a dialogue been started with other areas so as to further, in teaching and in research, an interdisciplinary approach to demographic topics. Insisting on continuing this former approach is anachronistic and urges serious reflection.

It is not only radical changes, both current and future, in demographic balances between the north and south of the world which have begun to undermine traditional schema. Other issues are coming to the fore, equally loaded with demographic consequences, not to mention their impact on future trends in economic and social policies. Let us recall urbanisation, the globalisation of international migration and ageing. For these reasons, now more than at any time to date, the very content of teaching is under scrutiny in the wealthy nations, where it is increasingly difficult even to guess the age of individuals, as changes in the life cycle are among the major processes underway. Since the mid-‘60’s life stages have been continually modified and have multiplied, which is of particular importance in how demographic events occur. Modernity has introduced a new gap between adolescence and adulthood. More and more young people choose to go to university, while entry to the labour market, marriage and parenting is increasingly postponed. The separation between biology and ageing is particularly witnessed by the life history of women. A short while ago women went from being daughters to wives. Today their life cycle closely mirrors those of men. At the other end of the scale, old age is being extended and broken down into different parts. There are the young old and the "really" old. Today’s 65-year old has little in common with an 80-year old, particularly in terms of physical and mental health and ability.

Numerous pages could be written providing other equally interesting examples of this. The scope of this brief introduction is to call on the scientific community to focus on the recent changes which have occurred, which are still happening and others which are hovering on the horizon, and update the demographic training of tomorrow’s academics and operators in the PUBLIC and private domains.

The scientific scope of the IUSSP Working Group on "Teaching" should be to encourage activities aimed at defining new guidelines for teaching demography in the future. The new content of demography should be clearly listed, making some differentiation according to the target group, future demographers on the one hand, and others who in the course of their professional activity need to apply some demographic know-how. With this in mind, a detailed activity programme has been drawn up to conclude with the 2001 IUSSP General Conference.

One of the goals is to organise a Special Session during the IUSSP General Conference on "Demographic Training in the Third Millennium". The Working Group will present a first report of its findings to date and discuss the spontaneous papers received. Papers in the following areas are encouraged:

• Training programme for demographic research

• Tradition and change in the teaching of demography: Different schools of thought

• A demographer’s education for the third Millennium: the hazards of specialisation.

Graziella Caselli