Learning for Life in the 21st Century
Subtitle: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education
Contributors: Gordon Wells (Editor)
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Limited
Published: May 1, 2002
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780631223313
First sentence: What should be the goals of education and by what means can those goals best be achieved?
Description: 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.