Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont is professor of psychology and education at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She studied in Geneva with Jean Piaget and prepared a degree in vocational guidance at the University of Lausanne and a Master in child development at the University of London. Her doctoral dissertation in social psychology in Geneva was concerned with a Vygotskian reading of the role of social interactions in cognitive development. She has been involved in professional training for child care, primary and secondary education, and youth work. Her research interests concern a socio-cultural approach of thinking, learning and vocational training as contextualized activities sustained or hindered by institutional settings that offer or fail to offer thinking spaces and opportunities for development in periods of profound social and technological changes. She actively participated in launching DORE, an action of the Swiss National Science Foundation supporting practical research in the areas of social work, health, education, music and theatre, fine arts, applied psychology and applied linguistics.

• Part I. Youth-Constructed Socialization: 1. Risks, rules, and roles: youth perspective on the work of learning for community development Shirley Brice Heath; 2. Youth between integration and disaffiliation in French cities Laurence Roulleau-Berger; 3. A new industry, a new lifestyle Karsten Hundeide; 4. Becoming a member by following the rules Alain Coulon; Part II. Personal Agency through Collective Activity: 5. Learning and thinking in adolescence and youth: how to inhabit new provinces of meaning Felice Carugati; 6. From the provinces of meaning to the capital of a good self: some reflections on learning and thinking in the process of growing adult in society John Rijsman; 7. Preapprenticeship: a transitional space Tania Zittoun; Part III. Learning in Practice and Discourse: 8. From learning lessons to living knowledge: instructional discourse and life experiences of youth in complex society Roger Säljö; 9. Practice and discourse as the intersection of individual and social in human development Jonathan Tudge; 10. Talking matters: using interdependencies of individual and collective action in youthful learning David Middleton; 11. Young people's use of information and communication technologies: the role of sociocultural abilities Jacques Perriault; Part IV. Intergenerational Sites for Thinking: 12. Thinking with others: the social dimension of learning in families and schools Clotilde Pontecorvo; 13. The role of discourse in the transformation of parent-adolescent relationships Manfred Hofer; 14. Interactive minds: a paradigm from lifespan psychology Ursula M. Staudinger; 15. Thinking 'youth', thinking 'school': social representations and field work in educational research Claude Albert Kaiser; Part V. Pathways to Adulthood in national Context: 16. Joining society in Europe: convergence or sustainability of national specificities Annie Fouquet; 17. The school-to-work transition: problems and indicators Paul Ryan; 18. To be young in Yugoslavia: living after a social Chernobyl Dragan Popadic; 19. Youth and unions in North America's service society Stuart Tannock; 20. Joining society: with what certainty? Saul Menghnagi.