Except from: Wink, J. (2010, 4/e, p.155) Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the REAL WORLD. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
PAIR SHARE
How to Do It
- Pair students. Each individual within a pair then chooses and explains a specific portion of the text.
- Questions are asked and discussed within pairs.
- After pair sharing, pairs share their discoveries and reflections with the whole group.
The Experience
Again, I remember the relief on their faces when, for the second time, they realized that they would not have to answer questions in front of the whole group and be embarrassed by their lack of understanding or frustration. This text is challenging for many good
readers, particularly on the first reading. I could sense the group warming to Pennycook’s ideas because they had control of the learning. Fiona wrote, in her ethnography of the class, “We discovered what was meaningful and relevant to each of us. Spontaneously, we began to compare and contrast with our peers’ perceptions. Eventually, we created a comparison and contrast chart on the board. Our ideas were so diverse. By the end of this activity, we moved from a personal interpretation to a discussion of why we had our interpretation.”
The dialogue deepened in ways that I could never have triggered if I had presented the material in a transmission model of pedagogy. The students began to make meaning of the ideas instead of blaming me for ideas that they found challenging.