Marsico, G., (2018). The challenges of the Schooling from Cultural Psychology of Education. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Sciences.52(3),474-489, DOI: 10.1007/s12124-018-9454-6

Education is in the core of societal change in all its different forms—from kindergartens to vocational schools and lifelong learning. Education—understood as goal-oriented personal movement—re-structures personal lives both inside school and outside the school. This special issue stems from the Cultural Psychology of Education (Marsico Culture & Psychology, 21(4), 445–454, 2015a, b, Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 40(4), 754–781, 2017)—a new approach to the field of education that examines how educational experience is culturally organized. This special issue is focused on the work of schooling as a crucial scientific arena to investigate. It is the follow up of an international workshop host by the Centre for Cultural Psychology (at Aalborg University, Demark) that was very thought provoking and from where several outcomes came out. Some of them are the papers here presented that tried to illuminate the different dimensions of the educational context in the East and West society with specific attention to the Chinese and Scandinavian educational practices. The dialogue between Chinese, European and North American scholars offered a complex view of the current educational challenges in the age of globalization. In this paper I try to focus on some of the most debated and challenging aspects in educational psychology worldwide: diversity, values and practical usability of psychology at school. I re-read these “hot topics” with the help of the themes developed by the authors of this special issue and in light of Cultural Psychology of Education. Then, I conclude by proposing a new agenda for the education of the future

Problem-Based Learning in Social Work Education: Students’ Experiences in Denmark

Problem-based learning (PBL) constitutes a promising way of integrating academia and social work practice because PBL fosters engagement with real-life problems and enhances important skills needed in social work practice. However, little attention has been given to social work students’ experiences of PBL. In this article we address this gap by exploring experiences of learning and learning preferences among master’s-level students in a Danish social work education setting where extensive problem-based project work is used. We find a discrepancy between students’ preferred learning and when they experience learning the most. Possible reasons for this discrepancy, and implications for teaching, are discussed