Tania Zittoun

Despite rising life expectancies and growing attention to the increasing proportion of older persons in rich democracies, we still know surprisingly little about how people develop after 60. This book proposes an integrative approach to development in older age that expands sociocultural psychology across the life course. It shows that people develop into older age while acting, feeling, remembering, imagining, and moving in the spaces where they live and interact with others. The diversity and singularity of ageing trajectories is also studied, highlighting how deeply the environment can guide and support as well as expand upon or offer resources to older persons. The author demonstrates the role of carefully designed social and institutional settings and well-planned ageing policies in fostering 'ageing in place'. By exploring housing, formal and informal care networks, and everyday arrangements that help older persons live meaningful lives, this volume speaks to anyone concerned with ageing.

Despite rising life expectancies and growing attention to the increasing proportion of older persons in rich democracies, we still know surprisingly little about how people develop after 60. This book proposes an integrative approach to development in older age that expands sociocultural psychology across the life course. It shows that people develop into older age while acting, feeling, remembering, imagining, and moving in the spaces where they live and interact with others. The diversity and singularity of ageing trajectories is also studied, highlighting how deeply the environment can guide and support as well as expand upon or offer resources to older persons. The author demonstrates the role of carefully designed social and institutional settings and well-planned ageing policies in fostering 'ageing in place'. By exploring housing, formal and informal care networks, and everyday arrangements that help older persons live meaningful lives, this volume speaks to anyone concerned with ageing.

Tania Zittoun demonstrates that there is pleasure in thinking, and that the pleasure of thinking plays a key role in our lives – in the development of children, in learning, in adult life, and in ageing. Drawing on arts and philosophy, exploring research in developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and psychoanalysis, it highlights five modalities of thinking: curiosity, the functional pleasure of pursuing a task, the pleasure of discovery, the dialogical pleasure of thinking with others, and a meta-pleasure. This book proposes a unique integrative model of thinking, conceived as a situated activity, following trajectories that combine modalities of pleasure. Evolving with time, the pleasure of thinking can take place as we reason, make sense, or daydream, at school, at work, when we garden, or do science. Academics and graduate students in sociocultural, critical, developmental, and cognitive psychology will benefit from The Pleasure of Thinking.

This brief presents the case study of a hill in Czech Republic (Ríp) and its region, and contributes to theorization in sociocultural psychology on three points, along three current debates. First, it contributes to the exploration of the mutual constitution of the lifecourse and of history, uses a distinction between socio-, micro- and ontogenesis, and argues that a focus on a delimited geographical space enables to better observe the processes by which history, daily situated interactions and courses of life shape each other. Second, in doing so, it sketches an understanding of the role of the material, spatial and semiotic specificities of landscapes in human development. Especially, it identifies some of the processes by which redundant dynamic patterns present in the environment may participate to the guidance of human experience. Third, it expands the reflection on case study construction and generalization. On the one side, it participates to a current debate in cultural psychology on the dynamics of generalization from single cases; on the other, it also dialogues with a more general reflection in the social sciences on social dynamics at the scale of small regions. Altogether, this brief is a first attempt to examine jointly these questions at the scale of a small region, a unique natural laboratory of social and psychological change. It will be of interest to researchers as well as graduate students in the fields of cultural and sociocultural psychology, cognitive psychology, and the social sciences.

This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency.In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency.In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

Drawing on philosophy, the history of psychology and the natural sciences, this book proposes a new theoretical foundation for the psychology of the life course. It features the study of unique individual life courses in their social and cultural environment, combining the perspectives of developmental and sociocultural psychology, psychotherapy, learning sciences and geronto-psychology. In particular, the book highlights semiotic processes, specific to human development, that allow us to draw upon past experiences, to choose among alternatives and to plan our futures. Imagination is an important outcome of semiotic processes and enables us to deal with daily constraints and transitions, and promotes the transformation of social representation and symbolic systems - giving each person a unique style, or 'melody', of living. The book concludes by questioning the methodology and epistemology of current life course studies.

Que peut faire une personne de quinze ans non promue la fin de l' cole obligatoire ? A quelles conditions une ann e scolaire de la derni re chance peut-elle lui permettre de commencer une formation professionnelle ? Pourquoi un jeune trait comme mauvais l ve pendant toute sa scolarit s'engagerait-il dans une ann e d' cole suppl mentaire ? Ce livre documente un dispositif d'insertion de la derni re chance qui a eu des r sultats tonnants: apr s une ann e, 80% des l ves qui y passent trouvent une place d'apprentissage et y restent. Pour comprendre l'efficacit de cette formation, l'auteur montre comment les propri t s d'un dispositif peuvent r pondre aux besoins sp cifiques de jeunes personnes: Comment un cadre p dagogique peut-il soutenir l'identit du jeune ? En quoi les changes entre formateurs peuvent-il aider le jeune prendre conscience de ses comp tences ? Comment les enseignants peuvent-ils faciliter la reconnaissance de leurs l ves par les employeurs ? Cet ouvrage analyse un dispositif visant aider des jeunes changer et trouver leur place dans le monde du travail. Il met en vidence le r le de formateurs constituant des quipes m diatrices . Il propose ainsi des outils pour mieux comprendre les dispositifs de formation et d'accompagnement des transitions de jeunes personnes.