Sharing Words

Sharing Words 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
Sharing Words 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, November 1999 *
In Sharing Words: Theory and Practice of Dialogic Learning, 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 , Sharing Words 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 *