Schooling: the contested bridge between individual and society

Abstract

Cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) provides a powerful explanation of how young people become functioning members of their local communities by participating in particular activities, in which they receive assistance in their zones of proximal development through guided participation or legitimate peripheral participation. However, it has been less successful in providing a theoretical account of the processes through which young people in the contemporary world appropriate the cultural resources that enable them to participate in and contribute to the larger society. What is missing is an adequate understanding of the ways in which becoming a member of society demands more than simply becoming a member of one's family and local community. And for this, an explanation of the role of formal education in providing the bridge between individual and society is required. In this paper, I contribute to such an explanation by exploring two issues: the organization of schooling, and the nature of the knowledge that schools expect students to master.

Keywords:

• schooling
• individual
• society
• cultural–historical activity theory
• mediation

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Rodney Ogawa, Anne Edwards and Natalie Bernasconi for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I should also like to acknowledge the contributions of my team of co-investigators to my thinking about the predicament facing pre-service teachers.