Introduction

Virginia Dazzani

Giuseppina Marsico

Marilena Ristum

pp. 1-7

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

Abstract

Education—be it restricted to teaching practices in the classroom or beyond this context—is a complex and determinate process through which individuals become human, that is to say, able to develop and use symbolic language in relationship to other human beings. It requires that the person deal with an intricate network of cultural realities, traditions, and institutions. However, this is also an indeterminate process, as the result is not a ready and finished personality, printed within the mind. Instead, a process of transformation is underway because these powers, skills, capabilities, and meanings are not present at the beginning; rather, they develop over a pathway that only comes to an end when the person no longer exists. Two central concepts define the chapters that appear in this book: context and borders. Strictly speaking, the aim of this book is to provide a sense of context to facilitate rethinking the relationship between actors, practices, and borders in the field of educational practices, from the perspective of cultural psychology (Valsiner in Invitation to cultural psychology. Sage, London, 2014). The main idea is to elaborate a reflection from theory to practice and then, considering a field of practices, to re-examine the ongoing conceptual construction, giving voice to the meanings produced by educational actors, teachers, parents, and students in their immersions in social actions (Dazzani and Marsico in Entreideias. Educação, Cultura e Sociedade 2(2):125–265, 2013; Marsico et al. in Crossing boundaries. Intercontextual dynamics between family and school. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC, 2013).