RETHINKING ABOUT A PROJECT IN SEARCH FOR AUTONOMY TO THE ELDERLY PEOPLE.

Abstract

This article presents a study case within a university extention project developed with a group of elderly people and proposed by a group of interdisciplinary teachers from the health area department at the Universidade do Vale do Itajaí (UNIVALI).The aim of this paper is to bring about a reflection about activities and approach strategies applied to encourage healthier attitudes regarding the autonomy of a group of elderly people, as part of a project named PAI (Elderly Autonomy Project). The methodology focused on the improvement of the elder speech through weekely tematic meetings when they took part in group activities related to their routine and challenging situations and to their decisionmake alternatives. The exchange of information, as weel as, the techniques used for group discussion on how they face daily challenging and confronting situations by making choices based on their cultural knowledge were registered. Their speeches were also registered and the corpus analysis showed a cultural diversity in their argumentation styles and therefore in their decisions. The conclusion reveals that the main characteristics in the decisions made by the group were verbal and non-verbal motivation and the effort towards individual and social autonomy practices.