The author, Kris Gutiérrez, is a learning scientist whose work has centered on understanding the cultural dimensions of learning, with particular interest in understanding how to leverage youths' everyday concepts and practices toward more expansive and equitable forms of learning. Gutiérrez discusses the big ideas that informed her work in…

This paper posits a move "toward the concrete" as a specific combination of curriculum studies and Cultural Studies, placing it squarely within the frames of postqualitative research (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013b, 2014). In addition to examining the theoretical legacies of the aforementioned fields, this paper…

This article discusses the use of an activity theory system as an analytical tool within the school art and design classroom. It highlights reasons for its use and makes explicit its importance for investigations into teaching and learning. It proposes that through an activity theory system, teachers and researchers are enabled to reflect on the…

This chapter evaluates Dewey's thinking in relation to the theorization of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA). It compares Dewey's concepts with ideas from social realism, Vygotsky, and cultural historical activity theory, illustrated by PLA research in South Africa.

This article shares our experience using a job-embedded active learning approach to support candidates' growth as systems-focused equity leaders in the University of Washington's Leadership for Learning program. We describe how socio-cultural learning theory helped us shift from field-based application projects to job-embedded learning. Our…

Female international students negotiate multiple identities as non-native learners and women in a society with different cultural, social, and gender expectations than their home countries. However, a review of literature on international students reveals a lack of comprehensive discussion on gender and the international graduate school…

The culture of poverty thesis did not emerge from the conservative shadows of American intellectual life, but from its most liberal hopes for the future. Most of its earliest champions were committed to the cause of Black uplift, but never escaped the shame and judgment of the culture of poverty thesis. We look to the life and writings of W. E. B.…

Drawing upon 36 interviews with individuals who lost loved ones to homicide and 32 months of participant observation of victim-centered events, in the present study, I investigate the processes through which forgiveness occurs in cases of varying cultural proximity between forgiver and forgiven. Through inductive analyses utilizing a symbolic…

Effective uses of digital technologies are vital to full inclusion in a network society. Digital-abilities researchers have produced several major frameworks, but these have generally not incorporated socio-contextual perspectives. To explore this lacuna, and engage in a reflective act of theorisation, activity theory is used to conceptualise four…

Southern feminist theorists make a pertinent call for the democratisation of knowledge between the North and the South. In this article, we embrace a southern perspective in feminist theory while embarking on a genealogical analysis of gender constructs in research about Igbo women in South-Eastern Nigeria. In that sense, the study of gender…

According to Galtung, violence can be divided into two kinds: (i) direct violence, which is always physical in a wider sense (e.g. bodily harm or verbal abuse) or (ii) indirect violence that is either structural (i.e. the institution is structurally violent because it is organised so to privilege a group over others; e.g. a strict pyramidal…

This is the opening paper of a special issue that focuses on certain cultural tendencies that have emerged as topical issues in the school curricula, in both flourishing and struggling against their social frames, namely: gender, sexuality and diversity. At the same time, new approaches to teacher education have ranged from varieties of feminism…

The international branch campus is a model of transnational higher education that establishes institutional outposts abroad to expand student access, collaborative research, language proficiency, and recognized degree programs to participants. The growing body of literature on IBCs presents this phenomenon as an exercise in intercultural…

Visual and cultural identities are situated in habitus, social theory on the body and clothing. Framed by narrative inquiry, girl method, and feminist research, I investigated the mean girl experiences of Grace and Hayley, who witnessed hostility alongside an exaggerated policed feminine sartorial aesthetic. White, middle and upper class, managers…

The article explores academic identities in Ukrainian research universities whilst means-ends decoupling takes place at the state level. The latter term implies that the practices of state policies are disconnected from the state's core goal of creating public welfare. Such means-ends decoupling occurs in oligarchic economies, Ukraine being one.…