Work

Intergenerational Learning across Home and School: Making Visible the Role of Grandparents

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Care and education are deeply intertwined, yet the crucial role grandparents play in supporting children’s learning often goes unrecognized beyond the private spheres of family life. This paper explores how grandparents navigate new boundaries between love, care, and learning with their grandchildren, in increasingly individualized societies. Drawing on biographical narratives from 12 grandparents of children in the earlier years of primary schooling in Ireland, it explores how intergenerational ‘bridges’ between the affective domains of home and school operate as practices of pedagogic care. We argue that recognizing grandparents’ roles in a wider context of intensified family and working life, can foster reciprocal learning practices that benefit children within the earlier years of primary schooling.

Source: Early Childhood Education Journal

DOI: 10.1007/s10643-025-01962-3