In a recent publication, Kieran Egan (2002) has launched an attack on both “progressive” and “traditional” ideas about the goals of education: the first, because they depend on a wrong view of human development; the second, because they lead to a utilitarian view; and both, because ultimately they shortchange children's intellectual development. Egan also proposes an alternative (elaborated more fully in Egan, 1997):

Although the expression “the fullest array of the cultural tools” raises the not unimportant question of the contents of curriculum, we will not concern ourselves with that here. Instead, our focus in this section of the present volume is inspired by what Egan calls the making of cultural tools into cognitive tools, or appropriation. Or, to be more precise, the issue is how to understand the human mind as it becomes progressively informed by cognitive tools.

This book is an outcome of a congress of the International Society for Research in Activity Theory (ISCRAT – nowadays known as ISCAR) that was organized in 2002 in Amsterdam. The main theme of this congress was “dealing with diversity,” and about 800 scholars from all over the world addressed this issue more or less directly from different perspectives. This book brings together a number of lectures that were delivered there and that illustrated some of the remarkable advances that were under way with regard to learning theory. Now, a couple of years later, the chapters in this book still contribute to the ongoing discussions within activity theory on learning, development, and teaching. We are grateful that Cambridge University Press is willing to publish this volume.

A few preliminary comments need to be made with regard to the spelling in this book. As scholars of many different countries and cultures were involved in the congress, we received many papers that were written with slightly different spellings of English words. The editors decided not to convert the differences into one universal spelling system. There is no reason why one system (American or British or whatever dialect of English) should dominate other acceptable ways of spelling. So the reader will find chapters with British English spelling and others with American English. This was our way of dealing with this diversity.

Another remark should be made with regard to the transcription of Russian names.