Culture and Emerging Educational Challenges

This book is the result of a long movement of ideas and practices between Brazil and Germany. It brings together different research methodologies (discourse analysis, case studies, cross-cultural comparison, and action and practice- research) and studies innovative theoretical approaches and childhood-related practices that question present power relations and open up new ways of dealing with emerging phenomena in the fields of school and educational policy as well as in home-rearing, therapeutic, and community practices. A series of critical case-studies and examples of radically innovative educational, media and therapeutic practices and community-based interventions are presented, all of which demonstrate the transformative powers of collective subjectivities in the making of the history of childhood and youth and of society in general. The studies presented in this volume also illustrate the role cultural-historical and qualitative childhood research may play in this 'making of history'. With an introduction by M. Kontopodis and chapters by: I. Behnken, M. Benites, F. Camerini, M. Damiani, B. Fichtner, F. Liberali, A. Lopes, M. Mascia, I. S. Soares, H. Winkler, and W. Wörster.

Dr. Michalis Kontopodis has studied Psychology in Greece, France, Poland and Germany and is currently a research associate at the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is the Secretary of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR). Kontopodis is engaged in both theoretical and empirical work on anthropological and cultural- psychological approaches to human cognition and development. He has also co- edited the Special Issue 'Materializing Times: from Memory to Imagination' of Memory Studies (January 2009, Vol. 2, Number 1) and the book 'Technologien des Selbst im Alltag' (with J. Niewöhner, in German 2009).