Intergenerational Education: The Significance of Reciprocity and Place

Abstract

In this article, the case is made for greater clarity in the definition of intergenerational practice and intergenerational education. Theoretically, the effects of all-age reciprocity and the significance of attending to “place” are explored. Taken together, they help point to what is distinctive about the scope and purpose of intergenerational education. The author argues that any intergenerational practice must always involve an educative element that is focused, at least in part, on the ongoing, reciprocal production of new relations between generations through the ways challenges are purposefully responded to in some specific place.