Making visible the literacy practices of elders through the day in the life methodology: considerations for literacy education across the lifespan

Abstract

This pilot study uses ‘day in the life' methodology to observe the everyday literacy practices of a self-identified thriving elder. Through the case of one nonagenarian female residing in an assisted living community in the United States, we identified the multimodal, posthuman nature of this elder's literacies, exploring how they were connected to a sense of well-being and the types of literacies that remain relevant across the lifespan. We further consider what the insights gained from such a study might teach about literacy education more generally. We advocate for education that keeps open people's literacy options across the lifespan through acknowledging and cultivating the myriad interrelated constituents of literacies, including the physical, social and political.