Education And Cultural Process

The author has brought together articles from leading scholars in the field of anthropology & education. This latest edition aims to sensitize readers to the subtle permutations of culture in the classroom.

George and Louise Spindler are widely regarded as significant founders of the field of educational anthropology. This book brings together their best, most seminal work from the last 50 years--a time frame representing the developmental epoch of the field--and binds them together with a master commentary by George Spindler. Previously scattered over a wide range of publications, the articles collected here allow for a unified view of the Spindlers' work and of the development of the field. The book opens with an insightful Foreword by Henry T. Trueba, a fascinating piece titled "A Life With Anthropology and Education: Interviews With George and Louise Spindler by Ray McDermott and Frederick Erickson," and George Spindler's "Previews" essay which gives the reader a grasp of the whole to which the parts of the book contribute. These pieces frame and contextualize the work that follows. In Part I, Character Defining, many of the major themes of this volume are first encountered; this section sets the stage for what follows. Part II, Comparisons, focuses on comparison, which the Spindlers view as essential to an anthropological approach. Part III, Ethnography in Action, is devoted to the explicit exposition of ethnographic methods (though actually every piece in the book is a demonstration of method). Part IV, American Culture, moves from a traditional representation of American Culture to a processual analysis of how the culture is transmitted in real situations, and finally to an interpretation of right-wing actions that seem to constitute a reactive movement; the implications for education are pursued. Part V, Cultural Therapy , explains what cultural therapy is and how it may be applied to teachers and students. The volume concludes with Part VI, Orientation, Susan Parman's overview of the works of the Spindlers that spans their whole career.

This book has one explicit purpose: to present a new theory of cultural learning in organisations which combines practice-based learning with cultural models - a cognitive anthropological schema theory of taken-for-granted connections - tied to the everyday meaningful use of artefacts. The understanding of culture as emerging in a process of learning open up for new understandings, which is useful for researchers, practitioners and students interested in dynamic studies of culture and cultural studies of organisations. The new approach goes beyond culture as a static, essentialist entity and open for our possibility to learn in organisations across national cultures, across ethnicity and across the apparently insurmountable local educational differences which makes it difficult for people to communicate working together in an increasingly globalized world. The empirical examples are mainly drawn from organisations of education and science which are melting-pots of cultural encounters.

Edited by a diverse group of expert collaborators, the Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning is a landmark volume that brings together cutting-edge research examining learning as entailing inherently cultural processes. Conceptualizing culture as both a set of social practices and connected to learner identities, the chapters synthesize contemporary research in elaborating a new vision of the cultural nature of learning, moving beyond summary to reshape the field toward studies that situate culture in the learning sciences alongside equity of educational processes and outcomes. With the recent increased focus on culture and equity within the educational research community, this volume presents a comprehensive, innovative treatment of what has become one of the field’s most timely and relevant topics.

This book analyses higher education from cultural perspectives and reflects on the uses of intellectual devices developed in the cultural studies of higher education over the last decades. It presents fresh perspectives to integrate cultural studies in higher education with wider societal processes and studies the internal life of higher education. The book uses cultural perspectives developed in previous studies to understand a variety of processes and reforms taking place.

In this volume, we have chosen to highlight the importance of education to human rights by reprinting two articles written by Paulo Freire (1921-1997) in 1970 for the Harvard Educational Review.