THE CULTURAL COMPLEXITIES OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN A POST-MODERN WORLD

The books under review focus on the role culture plays in studies of childhood socialization, learning, schooling in global contexts, and educational change. Key chapters highlight schooling practices not well known in Western culture. Both books advocate understanding and respecting cultural differences while emphasizing that cultures are dialectally reshaping and reorganizing in response to rapidly changing economic, political, and social forces. The challenge facing societies in the age of global communication is to preserve unique cultural heritages while acknowledging shared human values that may transcend the boundaries of a given world.