Borders in Education: Examining Contexts

Abstract

To take a cultural view of education does not really require constant cultural comparison. Rather, it requires that one consider education and school learning in their situated cultural context.(Jerome Bruner 1996, p. X)The research in educational psychology has often challenged the concept of educational context. According to the different theoretical frameworks, the construct of context, its borders, and the aspects to be taken into account have been defined in different ways. The objective of this book is to provide a context of discussion in order to rethink the relationship between actors, practices, and borders within the educational settings in the various currently thriving perspectives of cultural psychology (Valsiner 2014). The main idea is to focus on how teachers, parents, students, educators, and professionals, with their own identity and social representations, build their educational practices, share cultural spaces where knowledge is generated, and define the borders of the educational contexts (Marsico et al. 2013b). Scholars coming from different parts of the world contributed to this volume with their own perspective to depict educational processes as complex phenomena, taking place both inside and outside the educational setting, but also in between them. In this direction, the notion of educational context acquires different

Jerome S. Bruner: manifesto for the future of education / Jerome S. Bruner: manifiesto por el futuro de la educación

“…We do so through being compulsive meaning-makerswhatever we encounter in our lives we need to make sense of, rather than only to react to or act upon' (Valsiner, 2014, p. 1). This is true also for the meaning of any educational experience, be it inside or outside school (Marsico, Dazzani, Ristum, & Bastos, 2015).…”

“…Lo hacemos porque somos creadores compulsivos de significado; tenemos que dotar de sentido a todo aquello con lo que nos encontramos en nuestras vidas, en lugar de limitarnos a reaccionar o a actuar' (Traducción propia;Valsiner, 2014, p. 1). Lo mismo ocurre con el significado de cualquier experiencia educativa dentro o fuera del aula (Marsico et al, 2015).…”

Building Intersubjectivity in Online Learning: Pupils’ and University Students’ Perception of Teachers’ Social Presence in Technology-Mediated Teaching and Learning Processes

“…Any teaching-learning process occurring in a school setting needs various tools, strategies, practices, and methodologies. However, the idea that "the site has been substituted for extension which itself had replaced emplacement" (Foucault, 1967) demands the creation of other extensions that transcend temporal and spatial borders in education (Marsico et al, 2015). The inherent heterotopia of online environments calls for reflections beyond the analysis of strategies and tools to understand intersubjectivity in this environment.…”

The borderland

“…This double function of borders is a crucial feature for treating the notion of ''context-boundedness'' in Cultural Psychology (Marsico, Dazzani, Ristum, & Bastos, 2015).…”

“…Emphasizing the border's function of demarcation a differentiation, Americans try to reduce or negate the inherent ambivalence of border which simultaneously unites and divides, and in doing that, they reinforce the insideness, rather than the outsideness or the betweeness (Marsico et al, 2015).…”