(anti)dialogical reflection cards: Politicizing design education through Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy

Abstract

Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy can contribute to politicize design reflection and practice, promoting a praxis aimed at unveiling systems of oppression and producing transformative interventions. Freire helps us reflect on why and for whom we design and provokes us to question design processes as anti-dialogic, reinforcing oppressions; or dialogic, promoting alliances with the oppressed in the struggle to overcome oppressive situations. To help designers critically debate and appropriate these practices and concepts, we propose an educational material composed of 16 reflective cards based on Freire's critical pedagogy. Throughout this paper, we present the theoretical-practical basis that brings Freire and Design together, the content of the cards, suggestions for use and reflect on a real case of its use.