Klaus Hurrelmann is Senior Professor of Public Health and Education at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He previously served as Professor of Socialisation at Bielefeld University in Germany.Ullrich Bauer is Professor of Socialisation Research at the Faculty of Educational Science and Head of the Center for Prevention in Childhood and Adolescence at Bielefeld University in Germany.

• About the authors 1. The understanding of socialisation 2. Socialisation as productive processing of reality 3. Coping with developmental tasks 4. Productive processing of reality during the life course 5. Socialisation in the individual life stages 6. Contexts of socialisation in the life course 7. Inequality of socialisation during the life course 8. Conclusion and outlook Bibliography Index

"Socialisation seems like such a simple topic at first glance, but, as this book illustrates so well, the interactions between person and environment that constitute socialisation are incredibly complex. Hurrelmann and Bauer distill all of this complexity in an artfully accessible way that speaks to both psychology and sociology." – Robert Crosnoe, The University of Texas at Austin, USA"The authors’ key concept of ‘Productive Processing of Reality’ is much more than a catchy formula: it integrates approaches and findings from several disciplines, addressing many questions of how individuals master tensions between social integration and individuation. The book’s highly readable style will be a discovery for many readers." - Doris Bühler-Niederberger, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany