If you are comfortable with the role of the monologue-professor, then you do not need this book. However, if you are an educator who is interested in moving toward a teaching model more akin to a learning partnership then this book will be a useful resource. In this edition, Vella's original twelve principles of dialogue education are reintroduced and informed by six quantum concepts.

The list of twelve principles and practices that she suggests (in her first 1994 edition) will "ensure dialogue and effective learning" grows into fifty in her 1995 book, Training Through Dialogue. She acknowledges, "Although these principles and practices have been tested in community education settings, I believe they can also offer insight into educational processes for teachers and professors in more formal systems of education." I am not so sure they lend themselves as easily to adoption in a traditional academic setting, not because they are unsound but because their adoption requires a radical shift in the power structure of the traditional educational hierarchy.

In Dialogue Education, the students are involved at every step. Initially, using the principle and practice of a learning needs and resources assessment, the students are coached to identify their expectations of a curriculum and the ways the curriculum can or does have relevance to their own experience. In other words, students examine the intersections of their perspective on the subject with life experience. From thence they determine how the course is going to be useful to them. From the beginning, this is a very different process than the all-too-common "Introductory Lecture" in which the well-meaning professor expounds on the virtues and values of a course from his or her point of view and goes over the expectations established on the syllabus while the students sit mostly mute.

Vella's other eleven principles are also student-centered. There must be a sense of Safety, an atmosphere in which both/and thinking is encouraged without fear of being adrift. Sound Relationships, reflecting the uniqueness of all learners and their competence to contribute, is the third principle. Without identifying all twelve, suffice it to say that they are both obvious and elusive-they are principles and practices that sound good on paper but are much more difficult to achieve, especially in a traditional academic setting.

The second half of the book is devoted to case studies where each of the principles has been particularly important in an adult learning settings. These are fascinating stories from all over the world and are worth reading as much for the gems of cross-cultural insights as for their utility in seeing the principles in action. In every instance, from the Nepalese village to the atoll in the Maldives, the adults who were involved with the projects described a) were invested in solving a particular problem of direct relevance to them and b) had life experience beyond the traditional college-age learner. In other words, they may have needed help choosing the right silverware but they came to the table ready to eat.

As you will learn from visiting the author's website (www.janevella.com), her work and influence extend across continents, across racial barriers and across age and cultural barriers. She is strongly influenced by the work and writing of Paolo Friere, valuing dialogue over curricula, praxis over lecture, and critical thinking over memorization. She sees student-centered, dialogue-based education as the most effective way to identify and address the interests, and thus the needs of the student.

Vella's main premise is that "we evoke the world we perceive." If we, as educators, cling to a power structure that is built on dominance, we continue to play our part in reinforcing a detachment on the part of the learner. The student's ability to place him/herself in the context of the content is undermined if the only perspectives that are ultimately of value are those which fall out of the professor's mouth or spring from the required text.

While there are huge differences between the realms of traditional academia and Vella's adult learners, there is still great value in considering her strategies for involving students in identifying their own goals in learning.

Here's Vella's "radical" idea: Talk with them. Listen to them. Avoid "fishing for right answers" by asking open questions. Ask questions that really matter to them. Ask questions that really matter to you. This book offers useful, applicable guidance to a professor interested in developing such teaching techniques.

When Vella reviewed this commentary on the revised edition, she informed me that professors at many universities are now using these principles to inform their own classroom teaching. One professor at SUNY-Binghamton in New York had her class enrollment grow from 35 to 375 in three years when she used dialogue education. Vella invited us to talk to her at janevella@juno.com for further information and encouragement.

Connie Schrader
UNC Asheville