This book was published in 2003. Certain social and cultural changes have problematized many of the assumptions that underpinned educational thinking in the 20th century. These can be grouped under three broad headings: individualization, globalization and the ecological challenge. Each of these has potentially profound implications for education that have been little explored. Rising to the challenge, this volume examines individualization in relation to changing attitudes to childhood and the positioning and identity development of students within educational "markets". It discusses globalization from several crucial perspectives, including the reduced sovereignty of the nation state and the problematizing of notions of distance and proximity. The ever-increasing environmental crisis is considered in terms of the possibilities for education for sustainable development.

1: Education and the Triple Challenge to Modernity: the case for diversity; 2: Individualizing Educational Opportunity: the learner as producer, consumer and product; 3: Diverse Experience; Diverse Childhoods; 4: Words, Words, Words: the decentred subject of education; 5: Schooling, the Nation and 'The Culture'; 6: Conditional Literacies and the Case for Educational Pragmatism: the use of literacy in curriculum planning; 7: Environmental Literacy: functional, cultural, critical. The case of the SCAA guidelines; 8: Can We Educate for Sustainability?; 9: Why Teach? Effective Teaching as Positive Identity Development; 10: A Pragmatic View of Learning