WHAT WORKS? HOW DO WE KNOW?

<p>We know that what we are doing is working when the response to our assignments is lively and substantial. That happens when we "begin with where they are"—not with their weaknesses but with their strengths. We must appreciate the interdependence of personal and public, the particular and the universal, the individual and the group. The success of that mission depends on recognizing the logical role of interpretation in all meaning-making. (Paulo Freire's "pedagogy of knowing" remains useless without this principle, which he calls conscientization.) And it means that we must set about reclaiming the imagination—the powers of the active mind, the powers our students have for making meaning.</p>