Learning for Life in the 21st Century

United by the belief that the most significant factor in shaping the minds of young people is the cultural setting in which learning takes place, the twenty eminent contributors to this volume present new thinking on education across the boundaries of school, home, work and community. 1. Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education: Gordon Wells And Guy Claxton.

2. Education for the Learning Age: A Sociocultural Approach to Learning to Learn: Guy Claxton.

3. Becoming the Village Education Across Lives: Jay L. Lemke.

4. The Gift of Confidence: A Vygotskian View of Emotions: Holbrook Mahn and Vera John-Steiner.

5. From Activity to Directivity: The Question of Involvement in Education: Pablo Del Río and Amelia Álvarez.

6. Sociocultural Perspectives on Assessment: Caroline Gipps.

7. Teaching, Learning and Development: A Post-Vygotskian Perspective: Anna Stetsenko And Igor Arievitch.

8. Emerging Learning Narratives: A Perspective from Early Childhood Education: Margaret Carr.

9. Semiotic Mediation and Mental Development in Pluralistic Societies: Some Implications for Tomorrow's Schooling: Ruqaiya Hasan.

10. Learning to Argue and Reason Through Discourse in Educational Settings: Clotilde Pontecorvo And Laura Sterponi.

11.Developing Dialogues: Neil Mercer.

12. Supporting Students' Learning of Significant Mathematical Ideas: Paul Cobb And Kay Mcclain.

13. A Developmental Teaching Approach to Schooling: Seth Chaiklin.

14. Standards for Pedagogy: Research, Theory and Practive: Stephanie Stoll Dalton and Roland G. Tharp.

15. Enquiry as an Orientation for Learning, Teaching and Teacher Education: Gordon Wells.

16. Can a School Community Learn to Master Its Own Future? : An Activity-Theoretical Study of Expansive Learning Among Middle School Teachers: Yrjö Engeström, Ritva Engeström and Arja Suntio.

17. Cultural Historical Activity Theory and the Expantion of Opportunities for Learning After School: Katherine Brown And Michael Cole.

18. Building a Community of Educators Versus Effecting Conceptual Change in Individual Students: Multicaultural Education for Preservice Teachers: Eugene Matusov And Renée Hayes.

19.Organising Excursions into Specialist Discourse Communities: A Sociocultural Account of University Teaching: Andy Northedge.

20. Afterword: Luis C. Moll.

"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

Gordon Wells is Professor of Education at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Guy Claxton is Visiting Professor of Learning Science at the University of Bristol.

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.