ABSTRACT
Asked once about how he developed his integrated theory of instruction, Gagné replied after a slight pause, “You just … think it up!” Gagné thought up many things over the span of his career. How he did so can be attributed to a multitude of variables, including his training and disposition to become a psychologist, the types of jobs he held, and the people with whom he worked and collaborated. We begin this chapter with an overview of Gagné’s life and the many influences on it within historical and socio-cultural contexts. We hasten to point out that our use of the past tense stems from the fact that Gagné considers his career to be at its end. His final journal publication, a discussion of learning requirements and conditions within the specific context of job training, appeared in the Training Research Journal in 1995/1996. Even before then, however, Gagné gave away his professional library in preparation for taking up retirement life in the hills outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he lives quietly with his wife, Pat. Despite their increasingly fragile health, the Gagnés are always pleased to see their friends and former colleagues and are visited with regularity. 1
