ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the way in which different cultural dimensions affect pupils’ learning, the relative importance in each country of, for example, gender, ethnicity, teacher–pupil relationships, home background, peer group and the socio-economic context in shaping a learner’s career. Over historical time and through diverse processes, features of modern schooling developed into one normative institutional model (that) was increasingly linked to the ascendant nation-state (which was) itself fostered by a world political culture emerging from the conflicting dynamics of the world capitalist economy. Dale identifies the two central bases of world culture as the state – the primary locus of social organization – and the individual – as the primary basis of social action, the ultimate source of value and the locus of social meaning. Thus the final part of this chapter offers some more general observations concerning the implications of this study both for schooling today and in relation to the novel educational challenges of the future.
