Learning and developing over the life-course : A sociocultural approach

This article introduces the special issue “Learning and Developing over the Life-Course: A Sociocultural Approach”, which collects six papers stemming from the project “Ages for Learning and Growth: Sociocultural Perspectives” (AGILE), supported by the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. Considering that sociocultural psychology has mainly focused on development and learning in children, adolescents or (young) adults, AGILE aims at exploring learning and development in older people's lives. To do so, theoretical concepts and methodological tools used in research on other developmental periods had to be reconfigured and enlarged. The article first presents the main theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying sociocultural psychology, and shows the challenges of applying them to older people. Each of the six papers (by Aleksander Baucal, Michèle Grossen, Pernille Hviid, Kyoko Murakami, Roger Säljö, Fabienne Tarrago Salamin, Isabelle Tournier and Tania Zittoun) is then briefly introduced. In conclusion, the article emphasises the importance of accounting for the situatedness of older persons' activities, the meaning they give to these, and their experience of ageing. Methodologies that recognise the expertise of the persons participating in a study, and include them as active participants, are also called for.