Learning for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education - Hardcover

"Throughout, the editors achieve their stated goals, moving from the conceptual to the practical, and from treating younger to older age groups. Chapter contributors, from universities and research centers in seven countries including the US, appear to be experts in their areas. They present both their own research findings and reviews of others' research. [...] The book is generally organized well, with a synoptic afterword by Luis Moll [...] Interested readers should find the book useful. Summing up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." P. M. Socoski, City College, Choice, March 2003 "Learning for Life in the 21st Century is an impressive and ambitious book." Carey Jewitt, University of London, Educational Review, Vol.55, November 2003

Education is about developing minds that are ready to thrive in the complex uncertainties of the postmodern world: minds that are curious, confident, critical and collaborative. But how is that to be achieved? What are the implications for schools and teachers of rethinking education in this way? In Learning for Life in the 21st Century, a collection of distinguished international educators and researchers bend their minds to this problem - and come up with solutions and suggestions that are practical, challenging, and sometimes surprising. The book starts from the premise that the most significant factors in shaping minds are the cultural setting in which learning takes place, the activities in which participants engage, and the discourse among them. Underlining the wide acceptance of this perspective, the contributors are drawn from a range of countries: Australia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, the UK and the US . Each chapter explores the ideas and challenges that a sociocultural perspective raises for different aspects of schooling and lifelong education. What emerges is a coherent and comprehensive picture of what education needs to become in the context of escalating relativism and diversity in the world. The contributions are written in a thoughtful, engaging style, free from unnecessary technological jargon, and the volume is structured clearly to correspond to the chronological organization of education.