<i>Sharing Words</i> is educational theory and practice at its best. Politically charged and theoretically resourceful, this book re-establishes the imperative of critical learning as a basis for social change, and education as a crucial site of struggle for a radical democracy. Anyone interested in education should read this book.
- Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest,
Knowledge is not always disseminated from the top down to students or consumers. Sometimes, as Ramón Flecha here demonstrates, knowledge flows from the bottom up, when individuals with no degree or academic background ‘produce’ and ‘invent’ cultural analyses on the basis of their own experience, their thought, and the exchange with other inventors of their own culture. This book successfully takes a close look at this alternative educational process.
- Alain Touraine, Ecole des Hautes, Etudes de Sciences Sociales,
<i>Sharing Words</i> may be an example of a new way of writing about educational theory and practice, one that results in a captivating and enjoyable experience that invites the reader to share and comment with colleagues, students, and friends.
Harvard Educational Review
In <i>Sharing Words: Theory and Practice of Dialogic Learning</i>, Ramón Flecha provides a unique example of the theory and practice of dialogic learning. By mixing educational and social theory with literature, life narratives, and personal accounts, Flecha creatively narrates the practice of dialogic learning in a seemingly utopian reality: a literary circle in which low-literacy adults enjoy reading books by authors like Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and García Lorca. The book highlights both theory and practice; it is both expository and narrative; and it refers as much to educational and social science works as to classical literature. In this way , <i>Sharing Words</i> may be an example of a new way of writing about educational theory and practice, one that results in a captivating and enjoyable experience that invites the reader to share and comment with colleagues, students, and friends.
Harvard Educational Review
Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 2 Introduction: Priciples of Dialogic Learning
Chapter 3 1. Manuel: A Life Spent Struggling against Cultural Inequalities
Chapter 4 2. Lola: From "Illiterate" to Creator of a Literary Circle
Chapter 5 3. Chelo: Subject of Her Own Transformation
Chapter 6 4. Rocío: Overcoming Agism
Chapter 7 5. Juan: Decolonizing Everyday Life
Chapter 8 6. Rosalía: Dialogic Investigation
Chapter 9 7. Antonio: Gypsy Contribution to the Dialogue
Chapter 10 Index
Chapter 11 About the Author
This series illuminates the ways in which knowledge, culture, language, institutions, and human agency manifest themselves in the concerns and problems faced by society in the twenty-first century. The books in the series look at social processes as forms of textual, ideological, and political analysis. Authors are encouraged to account for cultures in a new understanding of the basis of democratic life, and to consider the ethical and social responsibilities implicit in socially committed scholarship.
Series Editor: Donaldo Macedo