ABSTRACT
Raymond Williams suggests in Keywords that: Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. That is why it seems important, at the outset of this chapter, to bring cultural matters into the spotlight in order later on to enable teachers and researchers to recognise them and acknowledge their potential influence. The culture of the home in which the young person is growing up, the culture of the individual school as an institution and the culture of the wider community, all represent and communicate different values and perspectives which students have to navigate. However, as Amy Azano points out in her research into English in rural schools in the US, Persistent poverty, geographic isolation, and cultural factors complicate educational issues in rural schools. Bruner is at pains to point out that education, as a larger cultural form than the individuals who comprise it, is not a free-standing institution, not an island.
