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Zittoun, Tania
Nom
Zittoun, Tania
Affiliation principale
Fonction
Professeure ordinaire
Email
tania.zittoun@unine.ch
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Résultat de la recherche
Voici les éléments 1 - 6 sur 6
- PublicationAccès libreThematic engagements: Affects and learning in older age(2024)
; In this paper, we propose a sociocultural perspective to consider affects in older age. The psychology of learning throughout the whole life course, including in the life of older adults, suggest that affects play an important role. However, developmental psychology has paid little attention to affects in learning and development, and even less to these aspects in older age. We believe that it is important to examine affects in older age because of their centrality in the lifecourse; but how to account for them? We propose the notion of thematic engagement to highlight the role of affects in older persons' learning and development, and to designate transversal and pluri-thematic interests across activities and domains of knowledge, which enable us to show that some topics, domains or interests become more important than others for a given person across time. We base our claims on a longitudinal study of older people engaging in different activities at home, in their neighbourhood, as well as in a daycare centre for older people, and provide three dialogical exemplars. We finally highlight some theoretical and empirical implications of our proposition. - PublicationAccès libreA New Housing Mode in a Regional Landscape of Care: A Sociocultural Psychological Study of a Boundary Object(2023)
; The study of ageing, which received growing attention over the past 30 years, has progressively realised the importance of the cultural, historical, and socio-economical environment for the various courses of ageing. However, we believe that it could be further conceptualised. First, we propose to enrich it through the notion of “landscape of care” developed by geography. Second, the distinction developed by sociocultural psychologists between sociogenesis, microgenesis, and ontogenesis is useful to articulate different scales of the landscape of care and to consider individual trajectories. Finally, the notion of boundary object leads us to discuss how a specific object might play a bridging function in this landscape. We draw on a regional case study carried out in a Swiss canton where the building of “flats with referees” is part of a new policy that aims at adapting the care and support network to demographic change and to favour ageing in place. Our hypothesis is that these flats may have a function of boundary object as they lead various actors to collaborate. Based on observations, desk research, and interviews, the study shows that on a sociogenetic level, these flats have a bridging function. However, on ontogenetic and microgenetic levels, divergences and misunderstandings hinder these flats to fully achieve this function. By examining the changes in the landscape of care, this article contributes to a better understanding of people’s trajectories within their sociocultural environments. - PublicationAccès libreCrises in the course of lives, Crises in society: A sociocultural approach(2022)Lives are constantly changing, and so are societies. Yet some changes seem more disruptive and these are especially strong than others, and we tend to call them "crises" - and these are especially strong when they imply a mismatch between changing lives and their evolving contexts. How to understand these phenomena? Sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse offers us a theoretical frame to study the mutual making of people's course of life, and their changing social and cultural environment. It has especially examined the role of ruptures and transitions in the course of life, and their role in human development; it has also provided conceptual means to examine the link between social and historical changes, and courses of life. At a theoretical level, it has brought to the fore semiotic, dialogical dynamics by which history and courses of life are related; at a methodological level, it has promoted case studies, whether individual or regional, to make these dynamics visible. In this lecture, I will thus examine a series of recent studies showSociocultural psychology, lifecourse, semiotic, dialogicaling the relation between crises in life, and crises in the context.
- PublicationAccès libreDaydreamingDaydreaming can be defined as the process by which we partly or fully decouple from what seems to be one’s current activity in the world. It usually designates “anything one may be thinking about that does not pertain to the task in which one is currently involved” (Pereira and Diriwächter, 2008). Occurring within our flow of consciousness, it entails fantasy or a form of diurnal dreaming. Daydreaming can be more or less deliberate, have more or less clear goals, be more or less structured, and have diverse types of outcomes. Authors usually distinguish daydreams that may enrich people’s relation to themselves, or their relation to the world, from those which seem not to enrich experiences. Most authors admit that daydreaming participates to our capacity to deal with our experiences and opens up new possibilities.
- PublicationAccès libreA sociocultural psychological approach to religion(2018-9-7)Sociocultural psychology can contribute to the understanding of religion, as it examines the dynamics by which the social and cultural world creates the conditions for the lives of unique people. This approach focuses especially on semiotic dynamics, by which religion can both guide practices and sense-making, but also become an object of shared representations. Drawing on a series of past studies, I first adopt an ontogenetic perspective, to explore early development into a sociocultural environment in which religion is present, and then to address young adults' religious bricolage. I especially show people's creativity in using various symbolic resources, linked to religious elements or not. Second, I consider more sociogenetic dynamics: boundary making processes taking place in intergroup dynamics. This leads me, third, to consider the resonances between social discourses on religion and more subjective experiences: I especially show how public discourses may create confusing fields of meaning which find deep resonances in emotional experiences, which may have dramatic consequences, both at the individual and collective levels. For each point, I try to show how such this theoretical perspective and empirical evidence may illuminate contemporary issues and debates.
- PublicationAccès libreSymbolic resources and sense-making in learning and instruction(2017)This paper presents the concept of symbolic resources for apprehending sense-making in learning and instruction. It first reminds the centrality of sense-making in learning and instruction from a sociocultural perspective, and proposes a pragmatist approach to examine what sorts of knowledge people use when they face situations that matter. The paper then presents two series of studies of symbolic resources. The first studies, led in informal situations, allow to define the concept of symbolic resources and a model of its uses. The second series is focused on school situations, and examines how school knowledge can be used as symbolic resources, and also, how symbolic resources can support learning in educational settings. This leads into a discussion on the role of institutional and social dynamics in the relations between learning in and out of school, at the heart of sense-making, as well as on the central role of imagination in learning and development. The paper ends by underlying the centrality of sense-making in learning and development, and the need to complement nomothetic studies with a more idiographic understanding of the complex dynamics involved.