Dazzani, V., Marsico, G., Ristum, M. & Bastos A.C. (2015). Becoming Human Inside, Outside and Between Contexts and Borders: A Cultural Lens on Education. In G. Marsico, V. Dazzani, M. Ristum & A.C. Bastos (Eds). (2015). Educational contexts and borders through a cultural lens – Looking inside. Viewing outside. Cultural Psychology of Education, 1, (pp.1-7),Geneve, Switzerland: Springer;

Education – be it restricted to teaching practices in the classroom or beyond this context – is a complex and determinate process through which individuals become human, so to say, able to develop and use symbolic language in relationship to other human beings. It requires that the person deal with an intricate network of cultural realities, traditions and institutions. But this is also an indeterminate process, as the result is not a ready and finished personality, printed within the mind; instead, a process of transformation is underway, because these powers, skills, capabilities and meanings are not present at the beginning – they develop over a pathway that only comes to an end when the person no longer exists. Two central concepts define the reunion of chapters that appear in this book: context and borders. Strictly speaking, the aim of this book is to provide a sense of context to facilitate rethinking the relationship between actors, practices and borders in the field of educational practices, from the perspective of Cultural Psychology (Valsiner, 2014). The main idea is to elaborate a reflection from theory to practice and then, considering a field of practices, to re-examine the ongoing conceptual construction, giving voice to the meanings produced by educational actors, teachers, parents, and students, in their immersions in social action