Addressing widespread discontent with contemporary schooling, Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore develop a unified theory of education and offer a prescription: the reconstitution of schools as 'educating societies.'

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I. Teaching, Schooling, and Literacy: A Unified Theory of Education: 1. The redefinition of teaching and schooling; 2. A theory of teaching as assisted performance; 3. The means of assisting performance; 4. The social organization of assisted performance; 5. Language, literacy, and thought; Part II. Practice: 6. A school organized for teaching: the Kamehameha Elementary Education Program; 7. The activity setting of the instructional conversation: developing word and discourse meaning; 8. The orchestration of activity settings: learning and social interaction in the whole group and independent centers; 9. The interpsychological plane of teacher training; 10. Assisting teacher performance through the ZPD: a case study; 11. The intrapsychological plane of teacher training: the internalization of higher-order teaching skills; 12. The schools in mind and society; References; Author index; Subject index.