Emancipatory Education Research Articles

Methodological proposal for the implementation of Emancipatory Education in Ecuador

This paper proposes a methodology to implement the principles of emancipatory education, based on the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and other theorists, in the Ecuadorian educational context. The main focus is to propose the strategy and teacher training to promote students' critical thinking and active participation, preparing them to contribute to the transformation of their environment. The results show that a methodological proposal must address economic constraints and limited access to digital resources, promoting critical analysis of social realities and transformative action through dialogue, reflection, and collaborative work.

Indigenous Politics of Emancipatory Education in Bolivia: The Role of the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata

This article analyzes how the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata in Bolivia challenged the feudal system known as gamonalismo in the 1930s-1940s within the broader context of Indigenous struggle. It demonstrates that distinct currents of Indigenous education, including indigenismo, Caciques-Apoderados’ Centro Educativo de Aborígenes “Bartolomé de las Casas,” and Alcaldes Mayores Particulares’ escuelas particulares, informed the Escuela-Ayllu’s community-led education. It argues that Warisata’s community members turned the Escuela-Ayllu into a political space of communal democracy that undermined the rural order structured by internal colonialism.

Образование как отражение традиций

The history of Brazil is divided into three periods: colonial (1500-1822), imperial (1822-1889), and republican (1889 to the present). From 2015 at 2024, there have been distinct definitions of what “education” is in Brazil. Therefore, I will examine the concepts of education presented by Dilma Rousseff in her Message to the National Congress (2015), by the National Common Curricular Base – BNCC, (2017), and by Jair Bolsonaro also in the Message to the National Congress (2019), respectively, focusing on the forms of humanist, technicist and elitist education. Having explained the definitions, I present the analysis of two Brazilian “unpublished documents” – a Compendium Philosophicum (1756) and Offended and defended Slavery 1840 – as examples of an education based on innovation and social commitment. From them I point out a critical reading of elitist and technicist forms and advocate for critical and emancipatory education, based on three elements: 1) the need to produce knowledge on a global scale with symmetry, reciprocity and recognition, 2) education thought as an action that transforms the human being, and 3) knowledge and education as the basis for the inclusion and overcoming social inequalities.

The Ungrading Learning Theory We Have Is Not the Ungrading Learning Theory We Need.

Ungrading is an emancipatory pedagogy that focuses on evaluative assessment of learning. Self-regulated learning (SRL) has consistently been referred to as the learning theory that undergirds ungrading, but SRL-with its deficit frame in the literature and in practice-fails to uphold ungrading's emancipatory aims. An asset-framed learning theory-one that combines the cultural orientation of funds of knowledge with the power dynamics of community cultural wealth-is proposed as an alternative to SRL. The proposed learning theory aligns ungrading to its emancipatory aims and may provide an opportunity to better understand the learning that occurs in ungraded classrooms. Scholarly and practical impacts for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and specifically biology, educational research and practice include investigating the plausibility of mixing learning theories, aligning learning theory to emancipatory aims and researching how faculty activate funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth, both individually and collectively, in ungraded STEM classrooms.

Content and Sentiment Analysis of Autobiographical Narratives of Experienced and Well-Evaluated Teachers in Spain

Analysing the content and feelings of teachers’ autobiographical narratives provides relevant information about teaching processes, challenges in professional development, performance, and identity. In this work, we analysed the narratives of five well-evaluated Spanish teachers with more than 10 years of experience. We used Iramuteq, RStudio, and TextRazor to describe the main themes, analyse the emotions, and check whether evidence-based teaching practices were mentioned. The results showed that emotional aspects were central, with positive feelings dominating. In the content analysis, themes such as mental health, inclusion, immigration, war, empathy, critical pedagogy, and autonomous and emancipatory education stand out. The analyses are relevant for teacher educators, policy makers, researchers, and teachers in training or in active service.

Nursing Students’ Perspectives on Caring Pedagogical Relationship Within the Context of Simulation: A Phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract:This phenomenological research aimed to describe and understand nursing students’ meaning of the lived experience of a caring pedagogical relationship within the context of high-fidelity clinical simulation. Being inspired by a relational emancipatory pedagogy perspective, our findings highlighted an authentic engagement of educators as the cornerstone to fostering a safe, caring, and inclusive learning space, allowing them to co-create a humanistic collaboration with students to transform their learning process. Innovative and various avenues arising from our findings have been suggested in different domains of nursing practice to promote students’ learning and develop a caring inclusive learning community within simulation centers.

Facilitating agency in Norwegian pupils struggling to stay in school—An alternative approach to emancipatory education

In this article we discuss a Norwegian alternative educational program which aids pupils struggling to stay in school. The practice displays an unconventional but promising approach to emancipatory education by facilitating agency in struggling pupils. We begin by providing some context on the Norwegian educational system and the Nordic model of education. Thereafter, we clarify our perception of educational equality and its underlying conditions. We then apply the chordal triad of agency as a heuristic framework for the qualitative analysis of our data material, consisting of three individual interviews, a focus group interview (N=6) and a guided tour at the location of the educational practice. The gathered testimonies suggest great potential in the program's ability at facilitating agency in at-risk pupils aged 9–16, thereby reducing chances of school dropout and social exclusion. Based on respondents' reflections, we conclude with some discussion comparing the studied practice to the formal Norwegian education system and its shortcomings in accommodating for certain pupil groups struggling to adapt to traditional schooling.

Emancipatory education in the Ecuadorian context: a systematic literature review

Emancipatory education is presented as an educational methodology that promotes the empowerment of students to achieve concrete learning goals. In this context, this paper presents a detailed literature review on the subject, to know the characteristics and global trends in emancipatory education. For this, the PRISMA methodology of the bibliographic review was used, and published works from the years 2023 and 2024 were selected, in Scopus databases. The main findings reveal that the topic of the study had a great emphasis in 2023 and that the main countries conducting research in this area are the United States and Brazil. This indicates that emancipatory education continues to be an issue of great international importance and therefore, it is necessary to develop a Latin American initiative.

Beyond COVID-19: Teaching and learning lessons for the next pandemic through Ubuntu currere

The emergence of the teaching an pandemic was a fundamentally disruptive force in the global higher education system that called on us to re-think the very purposes of higher education, our values, and who the academy is inherently for. Largely driven by the then panic over the unpredictable and infectious nature of the COVID-19 disease, higher education institutions had to close down and find virtual, Online and/or digital ways of continuing the teaching and learning programme. In this article, we firstly explore and theorise academics’ experiences of the emergency remote teaching and the complex challenges that they had to negotiate during this crisis in higher education. We reveal the complex, challenging and depressing experiences that they navigated as they grappled with the emergency remote teaching in their context, and the effect this had on their well-being. We propose the idea of Ubuntu currere as an emancipatory pedagogy, necessary to helping us respond to the next pandemic in the higher education sector. We suggest that our response to the next pandemic(s) needs to be anchored in decolonial and social justice frameworks, necessary for rethinking teaching and learning during a crisis.Contribution: In this article, our contribution is twofold. We firstly contribute to the emerging body of research that shines a spotlight on academics’ experiences, voices and/or narratives in grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic in their teaching and learning contexts. Secondly, we propose the idea of Ubuntu currere (i.e. Ubuntu curriculum) as offering us useful emancipatory lessons in responding to the future pandemics in higher education.

Professionalization for Education for Sustainable Development through Action Research using the Example of a University Course

The interdisciplinary character as well as the current and future relevance of the sustainability debate with all its inherent dilemmas and uncertainties, can provide fertile ground for educational innovation. Against this background, a team at the University of Klagenfurt, together with FORUM Umweltbildung and colleagues at teacher training colleges in Austria, designed the four-semester in-service course "BINE - Education for Sustainable Development - Innovations in Education". The aim of BINE is that the participants deal with the topics of sustainable development (SD) and education for sustainable development (ESD) as a learning community. An important element of this is the systematic reflection of innovations in their own practice within the framework of an action research study. The action research process provides a learning basis to promote the concepts of ESD as well as research and implementation skills of the participants. While sustainability topics are used as a vehicle for emancipatory education on the one hand, they are intended to trigger concrete sustainable social development processes on the other. This implies a great challenge, but also holds considerable potential for educational processes. With regard to sustainable development, education in the context of ESD means addressing questions in concrete fields of action about how the future can be shaped sustainably. This includes precise observation, analysis, evaluation and cooperative design of a concrete situation. Reflective action competence - and not blind action or unreflective action patterns - is a main goal of learning (Rauch & Pfaffenwimmer 2020).

‘Dancing the fine line’: developing critical agency with transgressive social pedagogy?

We explore bell hooks’s perspectives on transgressive learning and discuss the potential for a social pedagogical practice by changing its scope and material context through the concept of the common third. We apply hooks’s points on student–educator mutuality and the necessity of dynamically repositioning educator–student relationships. We explore how research findings from different educational contexts can relate to the tension between an individual qualification on society’s terms and the development of critical agency. We begin with recent research on youth experiences of transitioning through the Danish lower to upper secondary school system, and unfold analytical findings from the research on pedagogical practices in a youth empowerment programme situated within the American food justice movement. Similarities and differences between the radically different contexts are put into perspective by applying hooks’s understanding of transgressive learning, as well as scholarly discussions of pitfalls in the performance of emancipatory education as dialogic and classroom-based. Transgressive potentials depend on the dynamic organisation of a pedagogical framework around a common third with material, embodied and social dimensions. We suggest a conceptualisation of a transgressive social pedagogy that gradually develops critical agency. The common-third activity enables a kind of mutuality that transforms educators’ power positions and opens new ways for youths to develop their agency. We wish to contribute to a rethinking of the common third as a social pedagogical core concept of relevance for Denmark’s education system.

Emancipatory Education and Development of Alternative Educational Practices

Drawing on the standpoints of Critical Pedagogy and the Emancipatory view of education, this paper addresses the issue of developing alternative educational practices that can lead to a change in relationships in the classroom and possibly in the broader social context. In relation to some of the contemporary pedagogical views, some alternative pedagogical models are presented that promote changes in the relationships between teachers and students, and between students themselves. In an effort to create a more democratic environment, we address the question of how these models can also be establisheded in contemporary schools. Starting from the promotion of didactic teacher strategies that support student autonomy, some theoretical and practical pedagogical implications are highlighted that can encourage teachers to actively and cooperatively change the classroom and wider social relations and conditions with students. In addition, the paper provides an overview of contemporary education and gives a general recommendation for education workers who want to actively work for education based on ideas of emancipation.

Virtual games and social networks, barriers for autonomy education and enlightenment

In this study, we will analyze some inherent aspects to the entertainment industry, specifically regarding digital media and virtual games. These are widely disseminated in society, particularly among high school teenagers. As a consequence, they promote alienation to the consumption culture, which is full of multiple intentionalities. Furthermore, we can establish the cultural industry as a promoter of a culture of semi-information in the education of our youth, which creates barriers to support an emancipatory education. This study was conducted through Content Analysis on an online questionnaire applied to students of a public state high school, reinforcing and supporting the approaches presented in it. The analysis was based on the theories of ADORNO (1985), DARYELL (2014), LEVY (1993, 1996), BARDIN (1995), and ARROYO (2014) and rethinks the relationship between the cultural industry and youth practices in the field of high school education.

Activist Co-production for the Right to Occupy, Hold Ground, and Upgrade

This article theorises a multi-year participatory action research engagement focusing on young land occupations and consolidated favelas in São Paulo’s south periphery, providing an arsenal of tools for activist-scholars. Building on Paulo Freire's legacy, we call on academia to embrace activist co-production, learn from and support informal dwellers’ everyday urbanisms, and join social movements’ struggles for social transformation. We advance three modalities of action: awareness raising through emancipatory education and capacity building; articulatção through knowledge exchange between young and consolidated informal communities; and advocacy through policy reform for the right to occupy, hold ground, and upgrade.

What Might It Mean to Embrace Emancipatory Pedagogy in Medical Education?

An emerging and important goal of professional health training and education is to develop a workforce that is equipped to address patients' social and structural determinants of health and to contribute to health equity. However, current medical education does not adequately achieve this vision. Emancipatory teaching, as described by scholars such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, equips students with tools to identify and challenge oppressive systems. It helps students achieve freedom for themselves, thereby contributing to more emancipatory and humanistic patient care. Changing teaching in this way would help reverse implicit curricular values that tend to enshrine hierarchy and oppression. Humanities and bioethics scholars working within health professional schools thus should promote a more critical, emancipatory pedagogy in their institutions.

BNCC DE GEOGRAFIA DO ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL E AS CONTRADIÇÕES PARA UMA EDUCAÇÃO DECOLONIAL E ANTIRRACISTA

ABSTRACT: This article debates the educational policies in Brazil considering how changes in the education curriculum have direct implications for teaching practices and the social transformations of Brazilian reality. The objective is to analyze the limits of the Common National Curricular Base - BNCC (the new Brazilian education system) for the promotion of a decolonial and anti-racist education. For this, the document was subjected to an analysis of the contents and references associated with the ethnic-racial issues presented in its introductory text and, in particular, in the descriptors of skills and competences oriented to the subject Geography in Elementary School. The analysis made it possible to identify a set of contradictions and a series of structural and conjunctural setbacks that do not guarantee the development of a decolonial and anti-racist education. Some of these results reiterate that the BNCC was produced as part of the actions of conservative social agents in Brazilian society, therefore, it demonstrates low possibilities of promoting an emancipatory education.

EMANCIPATORY PEDAGOGY IN GERONTOLOGICAL SPACES

Abstract Awareness of the field of gerontology has been bolstered by increased training and education programs and other critical pedagogies in several disciplines in higher education. Public and philanthropic initiatives have also supported the development of scholars and researchers in this field (Gross & Eshbaugh, 2011; Merz et al., 2017; Snyder, Wesley, Lin & May, 2008; Wesley, 2005). Furthermore, research notes that incorporating experiences of LGBTQ+ older adults in gerontological spaces can help to address a lack of representation in higher education and provide critical training to support LGBTQ+ older adults (Lipinski, Wilson, Kortes-Miller & Stinchcombe, 2022; Smith, Altman, Meeks & Hinrichs, 2019). This symposium aims to discuss critical pedagogies and emancipatory gerontology in higher education through an intersectional lens. We aim to address the question, where do critical pedagogies flourish, where are they needed, and in what ways? Presenters discuss multiple aspects of this question, describing the ways in which access is a critical component of emancipatory pedagogies, including 1) how we learn and teach abolitionist gerontology in interdisciplinary spaces 2) confronting ableism and ageism in gerontological spaces as part of intergenerational pedagogical praxis and 3) highlighting the need for LGBTQ+ aging education in curricula by discussing a student-led “queering gerontology” campaign with tangible outcomes.

Popular knowledge as popular power: struggle and strategy of the Emancipa popular education movement in Brazil

ABSTRACT This paper is a written dialogue among four activists from the Emancipa Popular Education Movement in Brazil, following the principles of Freirean pedagogy as a ‘circle of culture’. It delves into how popular knowledge can be experienced as popular power, narrating the history, struggles, and strategies employed by the Emancipa movement in their pursuit of democratizing Brazilian universities. The discussion is set within the context of Latin American structural inequalities and the issue of educational exclusion in Brazil. It emphasizes the vital role of contesting culture and knowledge as part of the movement’s fight against social injustices perpetuated by peripheral capitalism, including racist violence and gender oppression. The paper adopts emancipatory pedagogy as the method to empower and mobilize grassroots efforts in this transformative endeavour.

Using teacher narratives to map policy effects in the Victorian Government International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) context

PurposeGovernment primary schools in Australia increasingly take up the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) to supplement government-mandated curriculum and governance expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers navigate and contest dual policy-practice expectations in the Victorian Government IB-PYP context.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a narrative inquiry approach. The narratives of two teachers were generated through a narrative interview and then re-storied with participants through a set of conceptual lenses drawn out of the policy assemblage and affect studies theoretical spaces.FindingsThe stories participants told show that competing mandatory local policy expressions are experienced and contested both to stabilize a technocratic rationality and produce alternative critical-political educational futures.Originality/valueThere a few accounts of teachers' policy experience in government school settings implementing the IB-PYP. In addressing this gap, this paper directly responds to prior claims of the IB's failure to promote an emancipatory pedagogy, showing instead that when teachers who bring a more critical understanding of educational purpose to their work take up the IB-PYP policy to support the enactment of that purpose.

Retracted: Proposing an emancipatory pedagogy of body-mapping in higher education: Theory and practical integration of arts-based research as a form of action research for transformation

Retracted: Proposing an emancipatory pedagogy of body-mapping in higher education: Theory and practical integration of arts-based research as a form of action research for transformation