Cultural Psychology of Education

Volume 10

Series Editor

Giuseppina Marsico, DISUFF, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy

Editorial Board

Jaan Valsiner, Department of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg,DenmarkNandita Chaudhary, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, IndiaMaria Virginia Dazzani, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia,Salvador, Bahia, BrazilXiao-Wen Li, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China NormalUniversity, Shanghai Shi, ChinaHarry Daniels, Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKNicolay Veresov, Monash University, AustraliaWolff-Michael Roth, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, Victoria,BC, CanadaYasuhiro Omi, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

This book series focuses on the development of new qualitative methodologies foreducational psychology and interdisciplinary enrichment in ideas and practices. Itpublishes key ideas of methodology, different approaches to schooling, family,relationships and social negotiations of issues of educational processes. It presentsnew perspectives, such as dynamic systems theory, dialogical perspectives on thedevelopment of the self within educational contexts, and the role of varioussymbolic resources in educational processes. The series publishes research rooted inthe cultural psychology framework, thus combining the fields of psychology,anthropology, sociology, education and history. Cultural psychology examines howhuman experience is organized culturally, through semiotic mediation, symbolicaction, accumulation and exchange of inter-subjectively shared representationsof the life-space. By taking this approach, the series breaks through the“ontological” conceptualization of education in which processes of education arelocalized in liminality. In this series, education is understood as goal-orientedpersonal movement that is at the core of societal change in all its different forms—from kindergarten to vocational school and lifelong learning. It restructurespersonal lives both inside school and outside the school. The cultural psychologyapproach to education fits the global processes of most countries becomingmulti-cultural in their social orders, reflects the interdisciplinary nature ofeducational psychology, and informs the applications of educational psychologyin a vast variety of cultural contexts.

This book series:

• Is the first to approach education from a cultural psychology perspective.• Offers an up-to-date exploration of recent work in cultural psychology of

education.• Brings together new, novel, and innovative ideas.• Broadens the practical usability of different trends of cultural psychology of

education.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13768

Pernille Hviid • Mariann MärtsinEditors

Culture in Educationand Education in CultureTensioned Dialogues and CreativeConstructions

123

EditorsPernille HviidDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of CopenhagenCopenhagen, Denmark

Mariann MärtsinSchool of Psychology and CounsellingQueensland University of TechnologyKelvin Grove, QLD, Australia

ISSN 2364-6780 ISSN 2364-6799 (electronic)Cultural Psychology of EducationISBN 978-3-030-28411-4 ISBN 978-3-030-28412-1 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28412-1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or partof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmissionor information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in thispublication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt fromthe relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in thisbook are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor theauthors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material containedherein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regardto jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AGThe registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface of the Series Editor

Education in Between the Established and the Possible

Reading the book Culture in Education and Education in Culture. TensionedDialogues and Creative Constructions, edited by Pernille Hviid and MariannMärtsin, I had the feeling of being before one of the crucial, and still unsolved,critical issues in education: that is the universalities and particularities of the edu-cational enterprise worldwide.

I myself have tried to address the point in the Manifesto for the Future ofEducation (Marsico 2017), where I discussed the need, for the contemporaryCultural Psychology of Education, to be increasingly international and global, whilepromoting the cultural sensitiveness of the educational intervention. I claimed that,in any society, the application of the know-how in the area of education is local.This may appear quite controversial in the current panorama of rampant neoliber-alism, with an increasing standardization and outcome-based focus.

This book, instead, intends to contribute to the discussion about education of aglobal scale, but rather than moving toward of education as a universal andhomogeneous practice, as the trend at present is, our attention is directed towardthe potential for learning from creative constructions (or unresolved tensions)between concrete local cultures and their educational aims and standards (Märtsin& Hviid this volume, p. x).

The need to share and promote the relevant psychosocial processes, value sys-tems, practices, and ideologies, in contexts that present a polyphony of perspec-tives, is the very core of this book.

Here, I must thank Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin, since I feel in goodcompany in my recent struggle to question what does it mean “diversity” or “in-clusion” in the context of the global flux of migration that is changing the geog-raphy of the world, as well as to discuss how the current educational ideology may

v

be disrespectful of the alternative value systems, and contribute to the impover-ishment of cultural diversity around the world. It is sufficient to think about theperpetration of acts of dominance, oppression, and silencing over native cultures(Guimarães 2016).

Yet, the most interesting theoretical contribution of this book resides in thenotion of “tensioned dialogue.” As the editors point out:

…new ideas and knowledge for the individuals and communities can emerge from thetensions between various perspectives and voices, when these are held (and dealt with) intheir dynamic developmental relationship, rather than being deformed in a way that thestriving for the “best outcome” leads to marginalization, stigmatization – in short, othering(Hviid & Märtsin, this volume, p. 260).

It is worth noting that the notion of tension has had a hard time to be acknowledgedas one of the essential aspects in all psychological processes (Marsico & Tateo,2017; 2018). Tension has often been considered as a negative feeling or state to beovercome as soon as possible. In this volume, instead, the ever-neglected positivevalue of tension has been reconsidered as a premise of any sort of creative con-struction between education and culture.

Also, Culture in Education and Education in Culture. Tensioned Dialogues andCreative Constructions delves around the dilemma, already addressed by JeromeBruner (1996; 2007), whether education (and schooling) should serve what is theestablished set of culturally acceptable knowledge or create the conditions for theyoung generations to deal with the always changeable future life. According toBruner:

I’ve become increasingly convinced that the powers of mind reach their fullness not simplyin accumulation – in what we come to know – but rather in what we can do with what weknow, how we are enabled to frame possibilities beyond the conventions of the present, toforge possible worlds (2007, p. 2).

Hviid & Märtsin’s volume offers interesting methodological and conceptual tools,not only to discuss the classic theme of “becoming an individual and a member ofsociety through education,” but also to question how to do it “in a way that respectsand supports the unique local ways, while also paying attention to global trends”(this volume, p. xi).

The book provides a refreshing intellectual journey between universal per-spectives and cultural diversity (Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania), andbetween education for individual creativity and societal progress that will be, forsure, of great interests for readers from all continents.

Salerno, ItalyJuly 2019

Giuseppina Marsico

vi Preface of the Series Editor

References

Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Bruner, J. S. (2007). Cultivating the possible, address at Oxford dedication, Jerome Bruner

Building. http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Transcript-Cultivating-the-Possible.pdf.

Guimarães, D. S. (2016). Amerindian paths: Guiding dialogues with psychology. Charlotte, NC:Information Age Publishing.

Marsico, G. (2017). Jerome S. Bruner: Manifesto for the future of education, infancia y apren-dizaje. Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 40(4), 754–781. https://doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2017.1367597.

Marsico, G. (2018). The challenges of the Schooling from Cultural Psychology of Education.Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, 52(3),474–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9454-6.

Marsico, G., Tateo, L. (2017). Borders, tensegrity and development in dialogue. IntegrativePsychological and Behavioural Sciences, 51(4), 536–556. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9398-2.

Marsico, G., Tateo, L. (Eds). (2018). The emergence of self in the educational contexts. CulturalPsychology of Education, 8, Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Preface of the Series Editor vii

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialoguesand Creative Constructions Between Cultureand Education in Cultural Developmental Key

Abstract This introductory chapter opens the field of education in a culturaldevelopmental perspective and explains how and why learning and development canbe considered as cultural processes. It discusses the way the tensioned dialogues andcreative constructions between education and culture are conceptualized in this bookand outlines the guiding question for this volume: when and how does an educationalintrusion produce a constructive surplus of individual and collective creativity, andwhen do educational contributions create unconstructive or even destructive tensionsfor the single individual and/or for the community? The introduction also provides anoverview of the main themes discussed in each chapter.

Introduction

The idea for this volume grew out of intense discussions, frustrations, new ideas,and hopes among educational and developmental researchers from diverse geo-graphical settings. The impetus for the book came from a series of workshopsfunded by East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; University of SaoPaulo, Sao Paolo, Brazil; Center of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University,Denmark, Department of Psychology; University of Copenhagen, Denmark andThe Danish, Agency for Science and Higher Education. These were held in severalparts of the world—China, Brazil, and Denmark—with the aim of learning fromeach other and creating together new ways of understanding the relation betweenculture, education, and the life course of children and young people. As part of theworkshops, several field trips to childcare centers, kindergartens, schools, andout-of-school activity centers were organized that provided ample opportunities fordiscussions and reflections among practitioners and academics about differencesand similarities, successes, and tensions, which exist between diverse culturalcontexts and ways of doing education. The results of some of those discussions andreflections have found their way into this book in the form of different chapters,

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while others have led to innovative research projects or continued to grow anddevelop in their particular locales. In addition to contributions from the initial trio ofcontexts, the book also includes chapters that reflect on challenges that are char-acteristic to the Australian context. By inviting Australian researchers to be part ofthis book, we sought to widen and diversify the reach and relevance of the dis-cussions gathered between the covers of this volume; yet perhaps ironically, thiswide geographic reach has also allowed us to underscore some of the centralarguments of this book.

The general aim of this book is to grapple with central global movements ineducational methodologies investigated in a cultural developmental perspective.The book intends to contribute to the discussion about education of a global scale,but rather than moving toward education as a universal and homogeneous practice,as the trend at present is, our attention is directed toward the potential for learningfrom creative constructions or tensions between concrete local cultures and theireducational aims and standards. We aim to achieve this by bringing together agroup of educational and developmental researchers and scholars grappling to findways to educate people and communities in a manner that responds to and sustainslocal cultures. The authors have different disciplinary backgrounds such as edu-cational and developmental psychology, early childhood education, teacher train-ing, educational sociology, and public health, and come from diverse geographicalcontexts: Australia, Brazil, China, and Europe. Despite these differences, they sharea conceptual grounding in cultural developmental theorizing and a vision for aculturally responsible globalized perspective on education.

Culture in Education

In conceptualizing culture, we draw upon the contemporary cultural developmentaltheory that sees culture as a unique organizer of the person–environmentrelationship. That is, we do not see culture as a container of a homogeneous classthat stands outside of the person and somehow makes him or her similar to others inthat class and different from others in another class (Valsiner 2014). Rather, weconceptualize culture as a mediator between person and environment that allowspositioning oneself in relation to the world and the world in relation to the self. Weassume that in this mediating role all cultural contexts are universally the same,although the tools and resources that different cultural contexts provide for orga-nizing the person–environment relationship may vary considerably.

We also assume that this mediating role that culture has can take different forms.We follow Hasan (2004) and Wertsch (2007) who have suggested that we candistinguish between visible or explicit and invisible or implicit cultural mediation,both of which are important in the context of education. In the case of visiblecultural mediation, the interaction is explicitly focused on a specific concept orproblem and at least one of the interaction partners acts consciously in the role

x Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues …

of the teacher. In contrast, in the case of invisible mediation, it is not clear to eitherparty what is being mediated or what the goal of the interaction is, for individualssimply engage in everyday interaction. Yet, as Hasan (2002) argues, importantelements of mental dispositions, identities, and practices are still being mediated inthose situations, where culture has become invisible and gone “underground”. For itis through these interactions that are not directly aimed at teaching and learning inschool and outside the school, which we learn to position ourselves in relation toothers and the world around us. This focus on becoming a person and a member ofsociety through education, the shaping of our ways of knowing and participatingthat happens in educational contexts, and how to do that in a culturally sustainableway, while also paying attention to global trends, is thus an important conceptualthread that runs through this book.

Education in Culture

In thinking about education in this book, we start from the position that education iscrucial in enhancing people’s lives, making them capable of developing as societalmembers and advancing their society in a rich and humane way. Education can beconsidered as “benevolent violence” (Valsiner 2008) to human and collectivecultural systems, in the sense that it intrudes and enforces change. This is meant tobe for the better, for the single person, and for the community. But following thisidea, the ethical and developmental question appears to be: when and how doessuch educational intrusion create a surplus of individual and collective creativity,and when do these educational contributions create unconstructive or evendestructive tensions for the single individual and/or for the community?

In our globalizing world, education is becoming a standardized imported com-modity that is based on global ideals and prototypical practices that often conflictwith the local and concrete cultural belief systems, traditions, and practices ofcollective cultures of people’s everyday lives. Educational offers or demands arethus a double-edged sword: on the one hand, they give human beings access to newpossibilities, while on the other hand also challenge collective and personal ways ofliving by enforcing its own inbuilt logic of “best-educational-and-cultural-practice”upon people and communities. The results are varied. In the worst-case scenario,education risks violating local and concrete collective ways of living, in ways thatestrange people from their own environment and creates conflicts and disruptions.

The increased focus on global competition in the past decades has added anotherlevel of complexity and speed to these developments. Today, evidence-basedteaching systems are exported and imported and cultural educational specificities,which previously served local aims, are replaced with systems that postulate towork for everyone, everywhere. We believe that this trend is common on a globallevel, and precisely this unites in a new and peculiar way educational communitiesthat were once very different in their degree of influence on what teachers were toteach, parents were to accept, and pupils were to learn. In some absurd sense, we areall becoming marginalized groups in a global educational abstractum. Without any

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues … xi

attempt to diminish the extremely difficult educational situation marginalizedcommunities or indigenous people experience, our suggestion in this book is thatwe have much more educational challenges in common than ever before.

In this context of global standardized educational systems and practices, the devel-opment of innovation of educational practices and methodologies is at risk. In theprocess of spreading evidence-based teaching and learning, the whole agenda of edu-cation is in danger of becoming frozen. Standardization serves the aim of comparing andcompeting. This aim is most successfully met, when standardization is complete andvariability is zero. From a cultural developmental perspective, such success is a catas-trophe (as already noticed in educating indigenous cultures) for variability and differenceis the foundation of generativity and development. While enabling competition, stan-dardization blocks the whole idea of education as a generative practice.

Are there any alternatives to this process? Could a perspective that is global butalso responds to and sustains local cultures offer an opportunity for the educationalresearch to enter in a productive dialogue and learn from each other, drawingattention to the diversity of practices and sometimes perfection with respect toarranging education in accordance to cultural meaning systems and intentions?Could we, more precisely, change focus from decontextualized methods and theiraverage effects to educational practices that show their productivity in the dialoguebetween the local and concrete collective cultures and their practices? The aim ofthis book is to move toward such a perspective. To us, such an approach alsoreintroduces education as a pedagogic enterprise.

We follow thus the line of thought that education is not beneficial nor damagingin and of itself, but can only be evaluated (and eventually planned) in relation to themeaning and meaningfulness it can come to have for the people who are engagedwith it (i.e., groups of students, teachers, parents, school administrators, researchersworking in schools) while relating to and living in their sociocultural environment.And precisely this is our focus in analyzing tensioned—creative or disruptive—dialogues between education and cultural arrangements. By this approach, wepropose a cultural psychological perspective on the developmental potentials—topersons, communities, and societies of education.

Format of the Book

Before describing the structure of this book, we want to comment on the generalstyle of this book. Working on the chapters of this book has been a deeplyrewarding activity through which we have learned a lot as cultural developmentalresearchers. As editors working with a group of authors from diverse culturalbackgrounds we have been acutely aware of the fact that this book is publishedaccording to Western publishing standards and in English language—requirementsthat are not necessarily fitting with our aims to respect the unique cultural ways ofknowing and writing that various authors presented to us. We have learned that forthe Amerindian people who have contributed to this volume, written language is

xii Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues …

“white peoples” language, not their language. We have come to know that forAustralian Aboriginal people, the linear and highly structured ways of explaining,analyzing, and discussing are unusual, while free-flowing and often spiral or cyclicways of telling stories—yarning—are more common. Such dilemmas are not to besolved here, but rather to be acknowledged and lived with. To lessen these tensions,we have decided to take the role of attentive listener and instead of imposing certainstylistic and content rules, work together with the authors to create chapters thattake into account these tensions while maintaining the uniqueness of each contri-bution. We believe that this diversity of styles enriches this volume and hope thatthe readers share our vision.

Content of the Book

All the chapters in this book analyze interrelationships between societal, localcultural, institutional, and personal levels of meaning-making. However, they do sowith varied prioritized agendas. Based on their unique focus, the chapters aregrouped into three parts. In Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization,the general questions, and tendencies in the relation between educational andsocietal development are presented and analyzed in relation to different educationalissues, such as the challenges of disruptive behavior in classrooms or learning aboutdemocracy by engaging in discussions about own and others’ religious beliefs andpractices. In Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education, the focusmoves from discussions about global trends as these impact Western educationalcontexts to relations between culture and education in concrete community casestudies in other cultural contexts. This part also includes discussions about the roleof culturally responsive methodologies and research strategies for working in suchcontexts. In Part III: Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives, we move closer tothe perspective of unique persons who participate in educational practices, be itchildren, young people in school, or teachers. The case studies in this part of thebook provide opportunities to examine the tensions and dialogues that characterizethe educational trajectories of individuals as these are negotiated within the implicitcultural guidance and offer unique conceptual perspectives for analyzing these.

While the three parts thus have their internal logic in moving from societaltoward personal tensions and dilemmas, the chapters still develop and provide theirunique contributions which will be briefly summarized in the following.

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues … xiii

Part I: Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization

Only a few can present the (Western) history of education, its fundamental ideas,and current challenges while at the same time clearing up conceptual misunder-standings and opening up new potential horizons in a single chapter. Yet,Wardekker can. His chapter offers a historical overview of Western education sinceEnlightenment and demonstrates that while much has been gained in that process(such as offering education, if not for all, then for many, many people) somethinghas also been lost. As a social movement, Wardekker writes, Enlightenmententailed a double responsibility. It urged human beings to take part in education andmake use of it, for the common good. It also urged societies to offer education foreverybody. Whereas education de facto is widespread today, it has, as a neoliberalpractice, renounced on making it accessible as a purposeful activity that can enablesocietal development and the common good, with conceptual knowledge. As partof the global competition, education has paradoxically ended up in a situation,where it promotes knowledge that is useful in competition (local or global) but is oflittle use in personal conduct of everyday living, together with other human beings.Although Wardekker shows no naivety with regard to turning around the neoliberaltank, he envisages several strategies to refine education as a double responsibilityfor the common good. One strategy is a revival and reconceptualization of Bildung,which already articulates a relation between person and his environment. Anotherstrategy concerns learning from non-Western (or to be more precise,non-neoliberal) education. The chapter is generous, as it explicitly deals withclassical pitfalls in educational science and in cultural–historical theory.

The focus on the pitfalls of neoliberal agenda in Western education is picked upalso in Thomas Szulevicz’s chapter “What Is Disruptive About DisruptiveBehavior?” (Chap. 2). In his chapter, Szulevicz investigates a newly emergingrelation between pupil’s disruptive behavior in classroom and education. Szuleviczdoes not argue that pupils are more disruptive today than in previous times. Rather,he argues that the disruption is seen in a new light when considered from theperspective of the neoliberal Learning Outcome Education. The author criticallyanalyzes the present-day “hyper-attention” on students’ and teachers’ work that ismeant to achieve the expected learning outcome. In this context, the noise or thedisruption, Szulevicz argues, is not seen as a critique of pupils’ conduct, neither as adistraction in their life or as an occupation with other matters of more relevance tothem. Rather, disruption is seen as a barrier for meeting the expected learning goals.Pupils and the conduct of their lives get lost in this focus on expected learningoutcomes, as do the teachers and the work that they do to support students’development. In this sense, the disruption also interrupts the task that is set beforeteachers, a task, they themselves are measured by.

The invitation by Wardekker to reapproach Bildung is taken up by Klitmøller &Jensen in their chapter “Bildung, Motivation, and Deliberative Democracy inPrimary Education” (Chap. 3). Drawing on data from a Danish school context, theyaim at investigating the relation between the conceptualization of motive, as it has

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been developed in cultural–historical psychology and the conceptualization ofBildung. Bildung is (still) central in Danish educational thinking, as it underlines thedevelopment of and education toward democratic citizenship. Following Vygotskyand Leontjev, the authors propose to understand motives as interdependent phe-nomena that develop in dialogue and interaction with other human beings aroundissues of personal and collective concern. Empirically, Klitmøller and Jensendemonstrate such evolving processes of motivation in dialogues between pupils,teachers, and researchers in 4th and 5th grade of a public school in Denmark. Whatis of special interest in this process is the dynamic evolvement of motives throughtwo interrelated processes: one which relates children’s everyday experience withscientific concepts and one which relates personal and local collective concerns. Inthis way, the authors argue for the need to reconnect education to children’s andyoung people’s everyday lives and experiences in- and outside of school.

Part II: Constructing Culturally Responsive Education

In their chapter “Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglements withMainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Transitionto School” (Chap. 5), Miller, Dawson-Sinclair, Eivers, and Thorpe also underscorethe idea of constructing strong connections between students’ experiences in schooland in their everyday life. They focus on the case study of Australian Aboriginalchildren’s transition to school and discuss it by building on the views and expe-riences of an indigenous educator. They thus discuss a case study at the borderbetween local and mainstream through the eyes of an educator working across thatborder. Building on the concept of cultural security as proposed by Coffin, theauthors argue for the need to open up a meaningful dialogue between local tradi-tions, protocols and curricula approaches, and mainstream schooling. Yet, they alsodiscuss the difficulties of doing that due to long history of and continuing impact ofcolonization, racism, and whiteness in Australian society and education. Theempirical material discussed in this chapter comes from a yarning session, and thechapter thus provides an illuminating example of using a culturally responsivemethodology, another culturally secure space through which transitions betweenlocal and mainstream can occur.

Colliver and Lee-Hammond’s chapter “A Cultural–Historical Model to InformCulturally Responsive Pedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices inSolomon Islands and Australia” (Chap. 6) continues our journey in Australia andtakes us also to Pacific islands. The authors draw upon Hedegaard’s wholenessapproach, where societal history, institutional traditions, educational practices, andpupil’s learning and development are seen as forming a whole, and explore twocase studies about the education of indigenous people in the Solomon Islands and inAustralia. The authors reexamine the model and elaborate on it, building onexperiences, where mismatches (or “gaps”, as the authors call them) exist betweenmainstream educational traditions and the local culture. Both with regard to

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues … xv

research methodologies and with regard to education, the authors recommendblended, or at the best synthesized, approaches that recognize and pay equal respectto both traditions. They too introduce yarning, a traditional indigenous nonlinearstory-telling practice as a dialogical research mode. In relation to teaching practices,they demonstrate cultural misfits in the classroom, where Westernized (and ratherold-fashioned) strategies offer indigenous children very little opportunities to learnanything from schooling; other than that they are unable to profit from it. However,the authors also demonstrate promising initiatives to blend, mix, and synthesizerichness and usefulness from both cultures.

In Lima, Martim & Guimarães chapter: “Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectoriesof the Mbya Guarani Struggle for a Differentiated Education” (Chap. 7), we aretaken to Brazil. Here, the authors present the Guarani peoples’ work for theestablishment of not only a culturally fitting education but of the reestablishmentof the whole Guarani community. Indigenous people of Brazil have for centuriesexperienced intense and inhuman suppression and rejection of all that they valueand stand for. And although there have been moments when it has felt that it makessense to have hope in the reestablishment of the indigenous communities in Brazil,the current political situation has once again crushed these hopes. This historicalprocess is not only a process of the education as such, but a process of thedevelopment of the community as a whole, in which education plays a central role.The chapter sketches the history from the sixteenth century of European invasion,killing, and missionary, to the establishment of the Brazilian republic in 1889 withdeportation of indigenous people to agriculture and Western mode of living, thedictatorship in the 1960s where the tiniest progress was lost again, and thebeginning of protective public policies in the 1980s. The work of these commu-nities is not only a work of healing wounds and trusting the new order (which is stillviolated), it is also an exorbitant work in restoring and adapting indigenous values,traditions, beliefs, and practices to the life in the twenty-first century, such asdealing with the present pollution, practices of land marking, and deforestation inBrazil. In this process, we are offered glimpses of a fitting education that is nev-ertheless formulated in relation to the Western tradition as historical and societalbackground, and thus requires critical reflections.

José Eduardo Ferreira Santos’ chapter takes us to a different kind of Brazil, for inhis chapter “Education for Beauty in Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection) and theEmergence of Creative Work at the Outskirts of Salvador, Brazil” (Chap. 8), Santosopens up a universe of living as a citizen of the outskirts of Salvador. One way ofpresenting this context is the one we already know: the Suburbia Ferroviário is afavela where a million of people live. It is extremely poor, and its inhabitants live ininhumane conditions; it is unhealthy and it is dangerous. However, is there more tothe outskirts? Santos argues that precisely this one-dimensional story of theperiphery hurts the people living there in tremendous ways, stigmatizing them, andparalyzing the community. He suggests that there is more to say about theperiphery. In Acervo da Laje, Santos and colleagues have created an alternativespace. A space for beauty. We are invited into the houses which are literally filled

xvi Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues …

with beauty; beauty made by well-known or “invisible” artist in the area or withbeauty-in-the-making by children, young people, and adults who work to generatepoetics in their own and others life, and thus to become strong, poetic, and creativeinhabitants of Suburbia Ferroviário. Developmental poetics is central to the researchof Santos and his colleagues. “We propose,” Santos writes, “that when art works inperipheral contexts, a protective and symbolic field is created in the face of situa-tions of violence, opening new perspectives of integration, in the sense of taking partin building a human culture and a human community” (Santos, this volume, p. 140).

Part III: Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives

The third and final part of this book is opened by a chapter by MoisèsEsteban-Guitart, who investigates the relation between pupil’s identity and edu-cation as a developmental phenomenon. Inspired mainly by Vygotsky and hissuccessors’ work within the cultural–historical tradition, Esteban-Guitart suggeststhat deep learning is facilitated when it stems from and transforms learners’ identity.He investigates this idea within his conceptualization of “funds of identity” and inrelation to three interrelated principles. The first principle concerns the distributedand situated development of identity, the second principle relates to the interrelationbetween identity and learning, and the third principle concerns the development ofpersonal sense, or meaningfulness in relation to education. Based on this analysis,Esteban-Guitart examines deep learning in educational contexts and introduces thenotion of deep teaching, in those cases, where education builds upon and dialogueswith children’s emerging identity.

Teuta Mehmeti and Tania Zittoun’s chapter “Using Symbolic Resources toOvercome Institutional Barriers: A Case Study of an Albanian-Speaking YoungWoman in Switzerland” (Chap. 11) demonstrates and discusses the potentials ofsociocultural analysis of “school-failures” (or school success for that matter). Thechapter is built around a rich case study of a young female student and her family,who have migrated from Albania to Switzerland. While Swiss education is typicallyconceived of as well developed, supportive, and democratic, this case shows adifferent pattern. The analysis of the case focuses on the dynamics in the relationbetween institutional constraints and personal engagements, symbolic resources,and resistance of an Albanian-Swiss student, who manages to follow her educa-tional dreams despite institutional hardship. The chapter is a strong argument for atheoretical perspective that includes the local collective culture as well as theparticipant’s personal interests and engagements in understanding school failure aswell as school success.

These concerns are taken up also in the chapter by Zhou, Li, Wu, and Gao thattakes us from Europe to China and from discussing the lives of pupils to thinking

Editors’ Introduction: Tensioned Dialogues … xvii

about the challenges of teachers. In their chapter, Zhou, Li, Wu, Gao, and col-leagues focus on the tensions between traditional Chinese educational culture andincreasingly global and Westernized pedagogical practices of today’s classroom, aswell as tensions between related societal needs for students’ independence andautonomy and the limitations of teacher training to support this. They analyzeprocesses of negotiating teacher identity by a group of teachers, who participated instructured reflective workshops to improve their teaching practices. For as theanalysis in Zhou, Li, Wu, and Gao’s chapter indicates, it is through this personalengagement and through dialogues with other teachers that new I-positions emergefor the teachers that allow them to engage with their students and support theirdevelopment, but also relate to the institutional and societal demands on teachers’work in a more productive manner.

In the final chapter of the book “Children’s Development: Between PersonalEngagements and Curriculum-Based Preschool Practices” (Chap. 13), Jakob WaagVilladsen aims at investigating these interdependent dynamics between institutionalpractices and persons making sense of their everyday life from a cultural life courseperspective, which incorporates an existential level to the cultural developmentalpsychological analysis. Drawing on Simmel, Villadsen articulates an importantdistinction between the collective and the personal culture. In so doing, he attemptsto treat these wholenesses as distinct yet interdependent. On the level of the person,Villadsen finds inspiration in Heidegger’s conceptualization of being-in-the-worldand introduces the conceptualizations of “engagement” and “life concern” asoverarching, interlinking, and situated expressions of what is meaningful and—in apersonal perspective—also necessary, in a person’s life for they give directionalityto the course of a person’s living. The empirical study concerns children’s lifecourse in Danish Early Childhood Education and Care. Through a number ofexamples, Villadsen demonstrates both convergence and divergence between per-sonal and collective culture, i.e., between children’s life concerns and engagementsand institutional goals and practices. The author argues that children’s resistance toinstitutional goals and practices are overheard as personal engagements and con-cerns, and with the institutional logic as frame of analysis, often understood as achild’s lack of developmental success.

In the Conclusion, we will return to these chapters in an attempt to synthesizetheir insights. In so doing, we will include the wise thoughts, careful considerations,and thought-provoking proposals from the three commentaries that are included inthis book: Ian Thompson on Part I, Rebeca Mejía-Arauz on Part II, and AngelaUchoa Branco on Part III.

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References

Hasan, R. (2004). The concept of semiotic mediation. Perspectives from Bernstein’s sociology.In J. Muller, B. Davies, & A. Morais (Eds.), Reading Bernstein, researching Bernstein (pp. 30–43). London: Routledge.

Hasan, R. (2002). Semiotic mediation and mental development in pluralistic societies: someimplications for tomorrow’s schooling. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.), Learning for life inthe 21st century: Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 112–126). Oxford,UK: Blackwell.

Valsiner, J. (2008). Open intransitivity circles in development and education: Pathway tosynthesis. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 23, 131. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03172741.

Valsiner, J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage.Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole, & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge

companion to Vygotsky (pp. 178–192). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Contents

Part I Perspectives on the Challenge of Globalization

1 Education, Competition, and Cultural Development . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Willem Wardekker

2 What Is Disruptive About Disruptive Behavior? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Thomas Szulevicz

3 Bildung, Motivation, and Deliberative Democracy in PrimaryEducation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Jacob Klitmøller and Sarah K. Jensen

4 Commentary to Part I: Perspectives on the Challengeof Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Ian Thompson

Part II Constructing Culturally Responsive Education

5 Cultural Security in Australian Classrooms: Entanglementswith Mainstream Education as Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Children Transition to School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Melinda G. Miller, Karen Dawson-Sinclair, Areana Eiversand Karen Thorpe

6 A Cultural–Historical Model to Inform Culturally ResponsivePedagogies: Case Studies of Educational Practices in SolomonIslands and Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Yeshe Colliver and Libby Lee-Hammond

7 Nhembo’ea Reko Regua: Trajectories of the Mbya GuaraniStruggle for a Differentiated Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Roberto Veríssimo Lima, Jurandir Augusto Martimand Danilo Silva Guimarães

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8 Education for Beauty in Acervo da Laje (The Laje Collection)and the Emergence of Creative Work at the Outskirts ofSalvador, Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125José Eduardo Ferreira Santos

9 Commentary to Part II: Constructing Culturally ResponsiveEducation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Rebeca Mejía-Arauz

Part III Educational Cultivation of Personal Lives

10 Identity in Education and Education in Identities: ConnectingCurriculum and School Practice to Students’ Livesand Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159Moisès Esteban-Guitart

11 Using Symbolic Resources to Overcome Institutional Barriers:A Case Study of an Albanian-Speaking Young Womanin Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177Teuta Mehmeti and Tania Zittoun

12 Teacher Identity in Structural Reflective Workshops:A View from China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199Zhou Li-Hua, Li Xiao-Wen, Wu Aruna and Gao Ya-Bing

13 Children’s Development: Between Personal Engagementsand Curriculum-Based Preschool Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217Jakob Waag Villadsen

14 Commentary to Part III: Cultural Perspectives on Self/IdentityIssues, Prejudice, and Symbolic Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239Angela Uchoa Branco

15 Editors’ Conclusion: Imagining an Education for “Good Life” . . . 251Pernille Hviid and Mariann Märtsin

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About the Editors

Pernille Hviid is trained as Preschool Teacher and has an M.A. and Ph.D. inPsychology. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology,University of Copenhagen (Denmark). She studies developmental processes withinthe cultural life course, emphasizing the interdependency between personal andcollective levels of meaning-making. Empirically, she has conducted studies ofchildren’s experiences of being, focusing on engagement and resistance, as itemerges and persists within the cultural life course. In addition, she has workedwith the organization and the managerial practices of public preschools inDenmark, aiming to develop local alternatives to New Public Management. She hasedited the online journal Outlines—Critical Practice Studies (2012–2018), coedited(with Wagoner and Chaudhary) the series Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures inCultural Psychology (2014 & 2015) and the volume Resistance in Everyday Life:Constructing Cultural Experiences (2018) (with Chaudhary, Marsico, andVilladsen). Recently, she contributed to The Sage Handbook of DevelopmentalPsychology and Early Childhood Education (in press) with “Educationalplay-supervision—playing and promoting children’s development of meaning.” Atpresent, she and a group of scholars collaborate on investigating the role preschoolsplays in Danish, Japanese, and Chinese communities and their contribution tochildren’s cultivation. e-mail: pernille.hviid@psy.ku.dk

Mariann Märtsin is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counsellingat Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and Research Fellow in theInstitute of Natural and Health Sciences at Tallinn University (Estonia). Her pri-mary area of interest is identity processes as these relate to experiences of educa-tion, migration, and major life course transitions in adulthood. She is aninterdisciplinary scholar, who draws her inspiration from semiotic cultural psy-chology. e-mail: mariann.martsin@tlu.ee

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