Lifelong Learning and Dementia

-Carol A. Taylor, University of Bath, UK

This book explores the potential for lifelong learning in dementia. A growing social issue, dementia has previously been understood as a wasteland for learning: at best, those with dementia are helped to hold on to some pre-existing skills. This book draws on extensive qualitative data with people with dementia and their families to demonstrate that new forms of learning can happen in dementia, with positive outcomes for both the learner and those around them. In doing so, this book demonstrates that those with dementia help us to understand learning differently, thus providing a breakthrough in our understanding and theorising of lifelong learning. Using posthuman theory to scaffold and discuss the findings, this pioneering book will appeal to scholars of dementia, lifelong learning and the posthuman.