Author(s)

Yuanyuan Liang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Guangzhou Huashang College, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 511300, China

Corresponding Author

Yuanyuan Liang

ABSTRACT

Against the backdrop of population aging, older adult education has emerged as a crucial pathway for actively responding to demographic aging and improving the lifelong education system, with its quality fundamentally contingent upon the teaching workforce. Drawing upon McClusky's Categories of Need Theory as its theoretical lens, this study categorizes learning needs into five levels-coping, expressive, contributive, influence, and transcendence-and employs this framework to examine the current state of teaching supply. The findings reveal four primary issues within the teaching workforce: insufficient professionalization, lagging occupational status, inadequate stabilization, and a structural supply-demand mismatch. Most notably, the structural mismatch stands out as the most prominent issue: teaching supply is concentrated at the foundational level, with insufficient responsiveness to higher-order needs such as contributive, influence, and transcendence needs. The underlying causes include fragmented management systems, unstable funding, outdated industry standards, and biased social perceptions. Accordingly, this study proposes an integrated optimization strategy encompassing "system improvement, professional enhancement, safeguard consolidation, training innovation, and demand-responsive provision," advocating for precisely targeted capacity building based on demand classification to promote the high-quality development of older adult education.

KEYWORDS

Active aging; Categories of Need Theory; Older Adult education; Teaching Workforce Development

CITE THIS PAPER

Yuanyuan Liang. Structural Mismatch in the Teaching Workforce for Older Adult Education and Its Optimization Strategies: A Demand-Classification Perspective. Advances in Educational Technology and Psychology (2026). Vol. 10, No. 4, 85-91. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/aetp.2026.100412.

REFERENCES

[1] National Bureau of Statistics. Statistical Communiqué of the People's Republic of China on the 2024 National Economic and Social Development [EB/OL]. 2025-02-28 http://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202502/t20250228_ 1958817.html#1.
[2] Li bin, Yang Yu, Zhang Rong. Research on the Construction Path of the Elderly Education Teacher Team System from the Perspective of Lifelong Education[J].Journal of Shanxi Open University,2026,(4):10-14.
[3] Ding Hongling, Zhang Yanan. Research on Strengthening the Construction of Teacher's Teams in the Aged Universities[J]. China Adult Education,2023,(19):53-56.
[4] Zhang Fei, Jiang Li. The Research and Enlightenment on the Elderly Education Ideology of Howard McClusky[J]. Adult Education,2023,(11):14-19.
[5] XU Min-hua, MEI Bing, PEI Jian-hua. The Current Situation and Strategies for the Faculty Construction of the Elderly Education from the Perspective of Lifelong Education [J]. Adult Education,2020,(11):34-42.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Curriculum and Teaching Methodology
  
  
• Transactions on Comparative Education
  
  
• Applied & Educational Psychology
  
  
• Advances in Vocational and Technical Education
  
  
• Adult and Higher Education