Borders in education

examining contexts

Giuseppina Marsico

Virginia Dazzani

Marilena Ristum

pp. 359-366

in: Giuseppina Marsico, Marilena Ristum, Souza de Souza Bastos (eds), Educational contexts and borders through a cultural lens, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

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. 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. This book stems from the contemporary cultural psychology and represents an attempt to reflect upon the educational contexts as characterized by the inherent unity of both situatedness and generalizability in their relationship with other life spaces or microcultures.