The Persistent Life of Oppression: The Unconscious,Power, and Subjectivity

The rise of standardization signals that Paulo Freire's critique of the banking concept of education continues to be relevant today. But Freire's theory of critical pedagogy has not gone without its critiques. On the one hand, the fact that these criticisms exist should not blind us to the fact that Freire's intention was to formulate an emancipatory pedagogy because of oppressive systems of education. On the other hand, we cannot continue Freire's project without heeding the warnings issued by these criticisms. In this paper, we address pressing issues concerning Freire's libratory pedagogy and the way it has been taken up by recent Marxist theorizing in education while at the same time maintaining the importance for thinking through an emancipatory pedagogy. We are clear: the real culprit in this situation is the persistent life of oppression itself. We utilize psychoanalysis and the theories of Michel Foucault in order to pinpoint and work through a specific problematic concerning Freire's theories – namely: oppression has an existence in the unconscious such that those who are oppressed form passionate attachments to the forms of power that oppress them. Indeed, such a problematic is not flattering for all who are concerned with forms of social oppression, but, we contend, that unless this problem is recognized and worked through, no real liberation is possible     

FREIRE RE-VIEWED

A bstract .  The work of Paulo Freire is associated with themes of oppression and liberation, and his critical pedagogy is visionary in its attempts to bring about social transformation. Freire has created a theory of education that embeds these issues within social relations that center around both ideological and material domination. In this review essay, Sue Jackson explores three books: Freire's final work Pedagogy of Indignation ; Cesar Augusto Rossatto's Engaging Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Possibility , which attempts to engage Freire's pedagogy of possibility; and C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin's edited collection Re-thinking Freire , which asks readers to reconsider Freire's work in light of globalization and environmental crises. Jackson questions the extent to which Freire's pedagogical approaches are useful to educators as well as to "the oppressed," and whether challenges to re-think Freire can lead to new kinds of critical pedagogies.     

Fight the power: situated learning and conscientisation in a gendered community of practice

In this paper, I employ situated learning theory to explore gendered processes of marginalisation and conscientisation in a social movement organisation. Using a student activist organisation as a case study, I explain women's awareness of and resistance to masculine performances of leadership and decision-making through the concept of gendered communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation. I explore how gender inequality is performed in a community of practice, and how it both impedes and facilitates learning and resistance through legitimate peripheral participation. I attempt to bridge situated learning and conscientisation to better theorise the learning and resistance that occur when people are marginalised within communities of practice.     

论弗莱雷教育哲学在德育教学中的价值

在我国的学校德育教学中,不少教师未能很好地解决方法问题,其在较大程度上所依赖的灌输与填鸭式教学严重挫伤了学生德育学习的兴趣和积极性,从而影响了德育教学的效果。在德育教学方法的革新中,巴西著名教育家弗莱雷的“问题教育”、“对话教育”思想曾经一度引人关注并被广泛推崇。本文认为弗莱雷教育思想对学生主体地位的尊重、对教学的生活化还原以及对美的境界的追求,在德育教学中体现出重要的人本价值、体验价值和美学价值。     

弗莱雷成人教育思想解读

弗莱雷成人教育实践历时时间长、范围广,影响深远,对其成人教育思想进行分析、研究,仍具有现实意义。     

保罗·弗莱雷成人教学思想述评

保罗.弗莱雷作为世界上有较大影响的教育家之一,他的成人教学思想博大精深、影响深远。本文从师生关系、教学方法、教学内容、教学原则、教学评价几个方面阐述保罗.弗莱雷的成人教学思想,并对其进行简要评价。     

教育即解放——试析保罗·弗莱雷的“解放教育学”

保罗·弗莱雷的“解放教育学”是当今世界最具影响的教育思潮。“教育即解放”是弗莱雷的核心教育观。文章试图通过揭示该教育观的基本内涵,对《被压迫者教育学》的框架进行概貌式的勾勒。     

保罗·弗莱雷的对话式教学及启示

保罗·弗莱雷在其代表作《被压迫者的教育学》中提出了闻名于世的“解放教育思想”,其中最主要的有“对话式教学”。弗莱雷用“对话式教学”来批判传统的“讲授式教学”,用“解放教育观”向“储蓄教育观”宣战,具有很大的启发意义。     

弗莱雷“解放教育思想”对我国教育的启示

解放教育思想主张人的解放,强调要把人从宗教迷信和唯科学主义的束缚中解放出来,强调摆脱人被物化、被异化的压境,使人所具有的潜能得到充分发展。当前我国教育还存在被困境压迫的弱势群体、被传统异化的教育、被制度压迫的教师等问题。投身解放教育就是要挣脱使受教育者非人性化的所有压迫和扭曲,主要途径是：使教育回归生活、使自由回归学生、使教师恢复话语权、促进弱势群体的教育公平等。     

Education,death and awakening: Hesse,Freire and the process of transformation

Education is a key theme in a number of Hermann Hesse’s novels and short stories. This paper focuses on Hesse’s last and longest fictional work, The Glass Bead Game, and analyses the transformation of Joseph Knecht, the central character, in the light of Paulo Freire’s theory of education. It is argued that over time Knecht develops a critical consciousness, becoming less certain of his certainties, more aware of his own incompleteness, and increasingly convinced of the importance of teaching. Dialogue plays a pivotal role in the development of Knecht’s critical awakening and his understanding of himself and his vocation as a human being. The paper discusses the relationship between conscientisation and contemplation, considers the significance of death as a theme in the novel, and reflects on some of the educational implications arising from Hesse’s work.     

Education for freedom: A look at the pedagogy of Freire

In the first two issues of Volume II,Prospects published articles written by Latin American educators for the International Commission on the Development of Education.At a time when several countries of that region are undertaking reforms of their educational systems (see Vol. II, No. 4, the article by Augusto Salazar Bondy), Alberto Silva's analysis, through its emphasis on Paulo Freire's educational methods, seems to be appropriate in order to eopen thought and controversy on this line of thinking. Author of L'École hors de l'École: lÉducation des Masses.     

Striving for a better world: Lessons from Freire in Grenada,Jamaica and Australia

The author of this paper considers the influence of Paulo Freire’s pedagogical philosophy on educational practice in three different geographical/political settings. She begins with reflections on her experience as a facilitator at Freire’s seminar, held in Grenada in 1980 for teachers and community educators, on the integration of work and study. This case demonstrates how Freire’s method of dialogic education achieved outcomes for the group of thoughtful collaboration leading to conscientisation in terms of deep reflection on their lives as teachers in Grenada and strategies for decolonising education and society. The second case under consideration is the arts-based pedagogy shaping the work of the Area Youth Foundation (AYF) in Kingston, Jamaica. Young participants, many of them from tough socio-economic backgrounds, are empowered by learning how to articulate their own experiences and relate these to social change. They express this conscientisation by creating stage performances, murals, photo-novella booklets and other artistic products. The third case study describes and evaluates the Honey Ant Reader project in Alice Springs, Australia. Aboriginal children, as well as the adults in their community, learn to read in their local language as well as Australian Standard English, using booklets created from Indigenous stories told by community Elders, featuring local customs and traditions. The author analyses how the “Freirean” pedagogy in all three cases exemplifies the process of encouraging the creation of knowledge for progressive social change, rather than teaching preconceived knowledge. This supports her discussion of the extent to which this is authentic to the spirit of the scholar/teacher Paulo Freire, who maintained that in our search for a better society, the world has to be made and remade. Her second, related aim is to raise questions about how education aligned with Freirean pedagogy can contribute to moving social change from the culture circle to the public sphere.     

Emancipatory and critical language education: a plea for translingual possible selves and worlds

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this paper, we attempt to emphasise the invaluable psychosocial, political, economic, and cultural function of language education in order to propose a critical view of the current transition from the monolingual to a multilingual paradigm. We maintain that multilingual approaches tend to serve the neoliberal framework and reproduce its systemic inequalities. Therefore, we argue in favour of emancipatory multilingual practices that could embody a translingual pedagogy capable of promoting the development of capabilities, the recognition of otherness, and the cultivation of diversity. Rooted in critical theory, namely in Foucault’s notion of subjectification and Freire’s view of conscientisation, an emancipatory translingual pedagogy would enable and empower every learner to synthesise a contextually creative field of new semantic and pragmatic relationships. Critical language education would enhance the ethos of biophilia that fosters what we term the poetics of communality and selfhood, that is to say, the proactive commitment to expanding symbolic and existential novelty.     

Using dialogical research methods to study Chicano college students

Using Freire's dialogical research method, it was found that Chicano college students could be seen as experiencing three contradictions: Isolation, achievement, and ethnic identity. These contradictions were codified by the research team into short vignettes that incorporated the main elements of each contradiction. The vignettes were used as the stimuli to initiate dialogs among the Chicano students about the contradictions. The dialogs constituted the raw data for analysis. Two generative themes were identified from the dialogical data: Education is experienced by the Chicano students within a context of struggle, and the students experience ethnicity within a context of cross pressures for assimilation and ethnic loyalty. Implications are drawn from the contradictions and generative themes for improving the academic achievement of Chicano college students.     

Learning and social change: The formal and the hidden curriculum

This article reviews the learning process and ways in which it can hinder or contribute to intellectual development, the development of critical consciousness (as defined by Paulo Freire), and social change. Interviews with students illustrate that Freire's concepts are applicable to understanding the process students describe as they extrapolate the hidden curriculum, examine the effect on their learning process, and struggle to free themselves from this socialization process. In conclusion, questions are raised about the relationship between alternative educational programs and social change.     

科学发展观对马克思主义社会发展理论的继承和丰富

以胡锦涛为总书记的党中央提出的要坚持以人为本、全面协调可持续的科学发展观,是对马克思主义关于社会发展趋向理论的继承和丰富;是对马克思主义关于社会发展宗旨理论的丰富和具体化;也是对马克思主义关于社会发展机制理论的丰富和具体化。     

Procedure for preventing response strain on random interval schedules with a linear feedback loop

An experiment examined the impact of a procedure designed to prevent response or extinction strain occurring on random interval schedules with a linear feedback loop (i.e., an RI+ schedule). Rats lever-pressed for food reinforcement on either a RI+ or a random interval (RI) schedule that was matched to the RI+ schedule in terms of reinforcement rate. Two groups of rats responded on an RI+ and two on an RI schedule matched for rate of reinforcement. One group on each schedule also received response-independent food if there had been no response for 60 s, and response-independent food continued to be delivered on an RT-60 schedule until a response was made. Rats on the RI and RI+ obtained similar rates of reinforcement and had similar reinforced inter-response times to one another. On the schedules without response-independent food, rats had similar rates of response to one another. However, while the delivery of response-independent food reduced rates of response on an RI schedule, they enhanced response rates on an RI+ schedule. These results suggest that rats can display sensitivity to the molar aspects of the free-operant contingency, when procedures are implemented to reduce the impact of factors such as extinction-strain.     

Assessment literacy and student learning: the case for explicitly developing students ‘assessment literacy’

In this paper, we report on a study to quantify the impact on student learning and on student assessment literacy of a brief assessment literacy intervention. We first define ‘assessment literacy’ then report on the development and validation of an assessment literacy measurement instrument. Using a pseudo-experimental design, we quantified the impact of an assessment literacy-building intervention on students’ assessment literacy levels and on their subsequent performance on an assessment task. The intervention involved students in the experimental condition analysing, discussing and applying an assessment rubric to actual examples of student work that exemplified extremes of standards of performance on the task (e.g. poor, excellent). Results showed that such a procedure could be expected to impact positively on assessment literacy levels and on student performance (on a similar or related task). Regression analyses indicated that the greatest predictor of enhanced student marks (on the assessment task that was the subject of the experiment), was the development of their ability to judge standards of performance on student work created in response to a similar task. The intervention took just 50 minutes indicating a good educational return on the pedagogical investment.