Robert Serpell – författare

Schooling in the modern world has a multiple agenda: the promotion of economic progress, the transmission of culture from generation to generation, and the cultivation of children's intellectual and moral development. Originally published in 1993, this book explores the difficulties of achieving a synthesis of these objectives, in a case study of a rural African community. The analysis contrasts the indigenous perspective on child development with the formal educational model of cognitive growth. Teachers in the local primary school are shown to face the challenge of bicultural mediation, and the significance of schooling is discussed for each of the diverse individuals of the study in terms of his or her own reflections and interpretations. Two different attempts to activate a local dialogue about the school as a community resource are described and the implications for approaches to educational planning are explored.

Literacy is one of the most highly valued cultural resources of contemporary American society, yet far too many children in the nation's cities leave school without becoming sufficiently literate. This book reports the results of a five-year longitudinal study in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, tracing literacy development from pre-kindergarten through third-grade for a sample of children from low and middle income families of European and African heritage. The authors examined the intimate culture of each child's home, defined by a confluence of parental beliefs, recurrent activities, and interactive processes, in relation to children's literacy competencies. Also examined were teacher beliefs and practices, and connections between home and school. With its broad-based consideration of the contexts of early literacy development, the book makes an important contribution to understanding how best to facilitate attainment of literacy for children from diverse backgrounds.

This Element traces the origins of an individual's philosophical orientation and the processes by which it was elaborated over the course of his life-journey. The author discusses how selected stories from his personal experience reflect the intimate culture of a particular social group of which he was a participant member at the time. The author's life-journey includes a tumultuous period of emerging adulthood in Singapore and Oxford. Moving to Zambia in 1965 aged 21, he conducted research, teaching and writing including sojourns in England and in Maryland USA. He discusses how his perspective in cultural psychology relates to his personal life as a migrant and as a parent, and to his views on how the world can best address the challenges of cooperative communication in the 2020s.

This Element traces the origins of an individual's philosophical orientation and the processes by which it was elaborated over the course of his life-journey. The author discusses how selected stories from his personal experience reflect the intimate culture of a particular social group of which he was a participant member at the time. The author's life-journey includes a tumultuous period of emerging adulthood in Singapore and Oxford. Moving to Zambia in 1965 aged 21, he conducted research, teaching and writing including sojourns in England and in Maryland USA. He discusses how his perspective in cultural psychology relates to his personal life as a migrant and as a parent, and to his views on how the world can best address the challenges of cooperative communication in the 2020s.