Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures offers concrete lessons to school reformers, policymakers, and classroom teachers about the value and effectiveness of different approaches to teaching writing. For U.S. educators, the British experience provides cogent reasons for rethinking the adoption of a "high stakes" national examination on the British model - a model Freedman found detrimental to learning. At the same time, the book highlights British educational policies and structures that could improve instruction in U.S. schools. British teachers, for instance, can aspire to positions of leadership and increasing responsibility within their schools, while professional opportunities for U.S. teachers generally take them away from their schools to share their expertise elsewhere. In observing the varied classrooms in both countries, Freedman looks anew at Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories of social interaction and their implications for learning, and she explores ways to meet the needs of all students when classes are not tracked by ability level.
Freedman's cross-cultural comparison stimulates us to envision new possibilities for our familiar school organizations in order to reshape our urban schools into institutions of high-quality education for all students.
Reports on a study by Freedman (education, U. of California at Berkeley) investigating why poor inner-city schools in London were turning out better writers than their counterparts in the US. The study included a national survey of teachers and students in England and a program by which English classes in the San Francisco area and in London exchanged writing. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
What can teachers in British and American inner-city schools learn from each other about literacy training? To explore this question, Sarah Warshauer Freedman and her British colleagues set up a writing exchange that matched classes from four middle and high schools in the San Francisco Bay area with their London equivalents.
Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures offers concrete lessons to school reformers, policymakers, and classroom teachers about the value and effectiveness of different approaches to teaching writing. Freedman goes beyond the specific subject matter of this study, looking anew at Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories of social interaction and addressing the larger questions of the relationship between culture and education.
