Crossing Boundaries

Intercontextual Dynamics Between Family And School

By:
Giuseppina Marsico, University of Salerno
Koji Komatsu, Osaka Kyoiku University
Antonio Iannaccone, University of Neuchâtel

A volume in the series: Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development. Editor(s): Jaan Valsiner, Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University.

Published 2013

This book brings in the focus on the borders between different contexts that need to be crossed, in the process of education.

Despite the considerable efforts of various groups of researchers all over the World, it does not seem that traditional educational psychology has succeeded in illuminating the complex issues involved in the schoolfamily relationship. From a methodological perspective, there is no satisfactory explanation of the connection between representations and actual practice in educational contexts.

Crossing Boundaries is an invitation to cultural psychology of educational processes to overcome the limits of existing educational psychology.

Eemphasizing social locomotion and the dynamic processes, the book try to capture the ambiguous richness of the transit from one context to another, of the symbolic perspective that accompanies the dialogue between family and school, of practices regulating the interstitial space between these different social systems.

How family and school fill, occupy, circulate, avoid or strategically use this space in between? What discourses and practices saturate this Border Zone and/or cross from one side to the other?

Crossing Boundaries gathers contributions with the clear aim of documenting and analysing what happens at points of contact between family culture and scholastic/educational culture from the perspective of everyday life.

This book is in itself an attempt to cross the border between the "theorizing on the borders" (and how “the outside world” and “the others” are perceived from a certain point of view) and “the practices" that characterize the school-home interaction.

CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface: Liminality of Education: The Importance of Border Zones, Jaan Valsiner. Editorial Introduction: Crossing Boundaries: Towards a New View on Cultural Psychology of Education, Antonio Iannaccone. Section I: Explorations of Regulatory Dynamics Taking Place During the Encounters of the Two Microsystems. How School Enters Family’s Everyday Life, Clotilde Pontecorvo, Vivian Liberati and Camilla Monaco. Cultural Diversity and Regulatory Dynamics of Participation Between Schools and Families, Margarida César. Conversation in Educational Contexts: School at Home and Home at School, Francesco Arcidiacono. Why and How Young Children’s “Presentational Self” Emerges in Day-to-Day Conversation About the Past? Focusing on Children’s Daily Trip to Yochien, in Japan, Koji Komatsu. The Family Goes to School: Talks and Rituals of an Intercontextual Meeting, Antonio Iannaccone and Giuseppina Marsico. Commentary, Felice Carugati. Section II: Analyses of the Representations’ System Produced by the Actors in One Context (Family) Towards the Other Microsystem (School). Teacher to Parents: Education as Compassion and Power, Robert Di Giulio and Regina Ritscher. Exploring Parents’ Cultural Models of Mathematical Knowledge in Multiethnic Primary Schools, Sarah Crafter and Guida de Abreu. Taking Care of Children and Pupils: Agreements and Disagreements in Parents’ and Teachers’ Social Representations, Patrizia Selleri and Felice Carugati. Parents’ Images of Their Children’s School System, Marco Guidi and Sergio Salvatore. Bridging Cultures Parent Workshops: Developing Cross- Cultural Harmony in Schools Serving Latino Immigrant Families, Pearl Chang Esau, Catherine D. Daley, Patricia M. Greenfield and Francisco J. Robles-Bodan. Crossing the Boundaries, Entering the Territory of Science: Women and Physics, Anna Maria Ajello, Cristina Belardi, Giulia Calafiore and Cristina Cimmino. Commentary, Clotilde Pontecorvo. General Conclusion: Moving Between the Social Spaces: Conditions for Boundaries Crossing, Giuseppina Marsico. About the Contributors.