Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and Human Development

Dr. Michalis Kontopodis studied psychology in Greece, France, Poland and Germany and completed his PhD at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of Free University Berlin, Germany. He worked at Humboldt University Berlin from 2007 to 2010, and was a visiting scholar at City University New York and at New York University in 2009. He was also invited as a visiting professor at Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paolo, and at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2010. He works as an assistant professor at the Department of Research & Theory in Education, VU University of Amsterdam and has also been external coordinator of the Summer University in Cultural-Historical Psychology at Moscow State University of Psychology and Education since 2010.His research interests concern marginalization, immigration, urban and countryside education, neoliberalism and biopedagogies, as well as institutional memory and digital media. His publications include special issues of the journals Outlines: Critical Practice Studies; Memory Studies; Science, Technology & Human Values and ETHOS, as well as three co-edited books, most importantly Children, Development and Education: Cultural, Historical, Anthropological Perspectives, with Springer (2011, co-edited with C. Wulf & B. Fichtner). Further information is provided at http://mkontopodis.wordpress.com/.

• Introduction: Looking to the Future 1. Learning, Development and Technologies of the Self: Dealing with Critical Situations and Marginalization in Germany 2. "Either Now or Never": The Developmental Temporalities of School-to Work Transition. Interlude: "I Can’t Begin Anything with This" 3. Freedom Writers, California, 1994 – 1998: When Meta-Reflection Creates Radically New Possibilities for Learning and Development at School 4. Doing Collective Pasts and Futures: Pedagogia da Terra in the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement in Brazil, Espírito Santo. Instead of an Epilogue: The Dynamics of Learning and Development as Becoming. Appendix.

"In this ambitious and provocative book, Michalis Kontopodis explores how temporal dimensions of development are enacted through culturally mediated social practices, highlighting the links between memory, imagination and collaboration. By drawing on everyday lives of marginalized students variously positioned within their unique cultures yet subjected to the abiding power of neoliberal educational regimes, this approach breaks with the tradition that assumes a position of a neutral observer. In its activist critical stance that interrogates political contexts of human development, the book exemplifies a novel and much needed trend in socio-cultural studies that itself helps to enact new possibilities for the future." - Anna Stetsenko, City University of New York, Co-editor of Voices within Vygotsky's Non-classical Psychology: Past, Present, Future (Nova Science, 2002)."Excellent book which moves brilliantly from the analysis of local schools and concrete student cases to a timely discussion of global educational politics and dynamics". - Christoph Wulf, Free University Berlin, Author of Educational Anthropology (LIT) and Educational Science: Hermeneutics, Empirical Research, Critical Theory (Waxmann), Editor of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft"Trained both in educational psychology and in anthropology, the author provides fantastic information about German, US and Brazilian educational projects while exploring students' personal dramas and developmental trajectories. The analysis sheds new light on existing Vygotskian scholarship and interpretation and opens new paths in the education of urban and rural marginalized populations." - Erineu Foerste, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil, Author of Parceria na Formação de Professores (CORTEZ, 2005) and Co-editor of Projeto Político-Pedagógico da Educação do Campo (PRONERA, 2008).