Each developmental period can be associated with the activity that plays a leading role in children’s lives during this period. The model of leading activities is culturally specific – leading activities are shaped by a given culture and subculture and reflect both the children’s abilities and the expectations of their parents and other mentors. Socioculturally constructed leading activities serve as a motor of child development. Within each of the developmental periods, activity-dependent cognitive and interpersonal skills lead to the formation of a new motive that corresponds to the new leading activity that becomes dominant during the next developmental period. The relationships between children and their sociocultural environment are reciprocal – the leading activities offered to children interact with children’s emerging abilities and motives, while these abilities and motives are shaped and developed by the leading activities. The following leading activities typical for industrial and post-industrial societies are examined: infancy – direct emotional contact with the caregiver; early childhood – joint object-centered activity; preschool age – sociodramatic play; elementary school age – formal learning; middle and high school age – peer interaction; adulthood – work activity.

The main focus of this chapter is to discuss how dramatically teaching and learning are changing, largely as a result of developments in technology. These changes have brought about changes in the roles of the teachers, of learners and even of the technologies themselves. Teachers not only have to manage their teaching environments, but they also need to manage their technological skills and the emotional load that goes along with the pressures of maintaining digital literacy. Learners are faced with having greater expectations to use technology, while it is expected that they are already skilled in using technologies for learning purposes. It explores the possible future directions of education, where teachers and learners need to consider not only what information needs to be learned, but also what information is acceptable to be referenced, along with the need to develop skills in evaluating information from the enormous amount of available resources. It also explores the view of teaching and learning in formal and informal contexts and looks at how mobile technologies have impacted both of these learning situations.