Theorising human development in adult life: a complex, multidimensional, dynamic, situated model

Although it is well established that human development is a lifecourse process, little is still known about development in the adult years. Few attempts have been made to develop integrative understandings of what people learn across various domains, such as work, hobbies and family. Also, adult life is addressed theoretically and empirically usually only on short life periods or through retrospective interviews. In this paper we propose a theoretical model that draws on a sociocultural tradition and that provides us with a series of concepts that enable us to describe and understand developmental dynamics in the course of lives of people, as these unfold in changing sociocultural environments. We put them at work on an only set of data, diaries written over more than twenty years. The article first introduces a theoretical framework for development across domains, and then puts it at work on two contrasting diaries. Altogether, the paper proposes a complex, longitudinal, multidimensional, dynamic, and situated model of human development in the lifecourse, contributing both to developmental literature and to methodological advancement.