Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Social Change

In this book, two well-known scholars of critical educational studies provide a compelling introduction to the thoughts of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and German critical theorist Jurgen Habermas. While there are many other books about these influential thinkers, this is the first to compare their theories in-depth and situate their thinking in relation to other social theories and philosophies of education. The authors demonstrate that, despite their differences, these philosophers share crucial views on science, society, critical social psychology, and educational praxis that are mutually illuminating and offer a new point of departure for a critical theory of education. The book is organized around the following themes: (a) Freire and Habermas’ philosophies of the social sciences as a form of critical social theory; (b) their theories of society; (c) the critical social psychology that underlies their conception of the dialogical and developmental subject; and (d) the implications of their overall perspective for educational practice.

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Epistemology of the Oppressed: The Dialectics of Paulo Freire’s Theory of Knowledge

As part of a critical analysis of his work, this paper argues that, at its core, Paulo Freire‘s critical, liberatory pedagogy as conceived in Education as the Practice of Freedom, coherently systematized in Extension or Communication and carried out through Pedagogy of the Oppressed into his later works, is grounded in a thoroughly Marxist, or dialectical materialist, theory of knowledge. It is my contention in this paper that an explication of Freire’s dialectical materialist epistemology provides for an increased understanding Freire’s liberatory pedagogy as a whole because it is difficult to grasp Freire’s pedagogy without understanding its Marxism.

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The Routledge international handbook of Critical Education

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education is the first authoritative reference work to provide an international analysis of the relationship between power, knowledge, education, and schooling. Rather than focusing solely on questions of how we teach efficiently and effectively, contributors to this volume push further to also think critically about education’s relationship to economic, political, and cultural power. The various sections of this book integrate into their analyses the conceptual, political, pedagogic, and practical histories, tensions, and resources that have established critical education as one of the most vital and growing movements within the field of education, including topics such as: Social Movements and Pedagogic Work, Critical Research Methods for Critical Education, The Politics of Practice and the Recreation of Theory, The Freirian Legacy. With a comprehensive introduction by Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin, along with 35 newly-commissioned pieces by some of the most prestigious education scholars in the world, this handbook provides the definitive statement on the state of critical education and on its possibilities for the future.

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Education-as-Commodity vs. Education-as-Social Justice: a brief Freirean analysis of the Academy Today

The future students … should share the paradigm of education-as-social justice.  The act of educating oneself … as an integral, organic activity of a society that seeks only the well-being of human beings everywhere. Concordantly, life in this entity will resemble a commune, as the organic nature of education-as-social justice suggests that not only will this community be different from the capitalist world in initially resides within, but it will also uphold a pointedly non-individualist paradigm (as it currently exists), one that places value not on the individual’s career, but on the health of the community.

… this new student will exist as the prototypical revolutionary citizen: one whose self-worth, satisfaction, and ‘success,’ rests not on her career, but in the vibrancy and health of her community and in her role in assuring that it is so.  Her “job” is to love the world, and in so doing, to name the new reality.  This student and her new school will indeed “throw this (the capitalist status quo) reality into question,” and ultimately “destabilize its dominant assumptions,” including the myth that education is itself a commodity.

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Introducing Participatory Visual Methodologies in Communication Research

I am pleased to see that a whole new range of non-textual strategies is gradually emerging as an alternative and highly versatile way of knowing. Specifically, participatory visual communications, such as sketching, photography, and video, hold the inherent potential of painting a more nuanced depiction of lived realities, while simultaneously empowering the study participants, and placing the agency literally in their own hands. Through the generation of images, and the reflective sharing of this visual content among community members, participants gain self-efficacy and collective efficacy, as well as an expressive channel to voice their hidden or marginalized stories.

Central to the use of this technique in educational settings was the work of Paulo Freire, a noted Brazilian sociologist who pioneered the “dialogic pedadogy” approach as a non-hierarchical, dynamic and transformative process of learning. Conducting a literacy project in Peru in 1973, Freire asked slum dwellers to respond to the query of “What is exploitation?”, but instead of documenting their oral responses, he handed them cameras and asked them to provide their answers by using photographs.

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Dialogue, Knowledge, and Teacher-Student Relations – Freirean Pedagogy in Theory and Practice

In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork among popular adult education non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Brazil to show how popular educators interpreted and acted based on Freirean pedagogical theory in ways that appeared to reduce its potential for social change. I pay particular attention to three complicated issues that continue to trouble popular or critical educators everywhere: understanding the meaning of dialogue, transforming traditional teacher-student relations, and incorporating local knowledge into the classroom.

In what follows, I first outline some of the basic tenets of Freire’s philosophy. I then discuss the setting of this study, the history of popular education in that region, and the methods by which I collected the data for this study. In the core of the article, I use ethnographic data to show how Brazilian adult educators understood and employed Freirean pedagogical theory. I then discuss what these findings teach us about critical literacy and critical pedagogy.

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We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

This dialogue between two of the most prominent thinkers on social change in the twentieth century was certainly a meeting of giants. Throughout their highly personal conversations recorded here, Horton and Freire discuss the nature of social change and empowerment and their individual literacy campaigns. The ideas of these men developed through two very different channels: Horton’s, from the Highlander Center, a small, independent residential education center situated outside the formal schooling system and the state; Freire’s, from within university and state-sponsored programs.

For both men, real liberation is achieved through popular participation. The themes they discuss illuminate problems faced by educators and activists around the world who are concerned with linking participatory education to the practice of liberation and social change. How could two men, working in such different social spaces and times, arrive at similar ideas and methods? These conversations answer that question in rich detail and engaging anecdotes, and show that, underlying the philosophy of both, is the idea that theory emanates from practice and that knowledge grows from and is a reflection of social experience.

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We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

Rethinking Critical Pedagogy and the Gramscian and Freirean Legacies

Critical pedagogy problematizes the relationship between education and politics, between sociopolitical relations and pedagogical practices, between the reproduction of dependent hierarchies of power and privilege in the domain of everyday social life and that of classrooms and institutions. In doing so, it advances an agenda for educational transformation by encouraging educators to understand the sociopolitical contexts of educative acts and the importance of radically democratizing both educational sites and larger social formations. In such processes, educators take on intellectual roles by adapting to, resisting, and challenging curriculum, school policy, educational philosophies, and pedagogical traditions. This article revisits the contributions of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire to critical pedagogy, giving particular attention to the related concepts of hegemony and the intellectual.

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Read also: Critical pedagogy at Learning Change

Paulo Freire Freedom School

“Education is always and everywhere about opening doors, opening minds, opening possibilities. Education is about opening your eyes and seeing for yourself the world as it really is in all its complexity, and then finding the tools and the strength to participate fully, even to change some of what you find.”

We had been dreaming about opening a free public school focused on social justice and environmental sustainability since 2000. We dreamed of a school where every student was known well, where differences were honored and celebrated, and where learning was deep, powerful and transformative. On August 23, 2005 our dream became a reality and Paulo Freire Freedom School opened its doors.

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Read also: Democracy and Education on “Paulo Freire Freedom School“

Community organizing, learning and social change – communication and power – Reflect Approach

Reflect is an approach to learning and social change. Reflect aims to improve the meaningful participation of people in decisions that affect their lives, through strengthening their ability to communicate. Reflect begins with respect and value for people’s existing knowledge and experience. Reflect involves a continual cycle of reflection and action. A wide range of participatory tools is used within a Reflect process to help create an open or democratic environment in which everyone is able to contribute. Reflect is premised on the recognition that achieving social change and greater social justice is a fundamentally political process. It seeks to help people in the struggle to assert their rights, challenge injustice and change their position in society and as such requires us to explicitly align ourselves with the poorest and most marginalised. It involves working with people rather than for them.

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