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International Review of Education

, Volume 60, Issue 4, pp 523–543 | Cite as

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

  • Anne Hickling-Hudson
Article
First Online:

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Paulo Freire Freirean pedagogical practice Dialogic education Work-study concept Theatre arts education Area Youth Foundation (AYF) Indigenous education Honey Ant Readers Grenada Jamaica Australia 

Résumé

Lutter pour une vie meilleure : enseignements freiriens à Grenade, en Jamaïque et en Australie – L’auteure de cet article examine l’influence de la philosophie pédagogique de Paulo Freire sur la pratique éducative appliquée dans trois environnements géopolitiques différents. Elle débute par une réflexion sur sa propre expérience d’animatrice lors d’un séminaire freirien tenu en 1980 à Grenade pour des enseignants et éducateurs communautaires sur l’association de la théorie et de la pratique. Son analyse atteste que la méthode freirienne de l’éducation dialogique a obtenu des résultats auprès d’un groupe de collaboration attentive menant à une conscientisation, en termes de réflexion approfondie sur la vie d’enseignants à Grenade, ainsi que de stratégies en vue de la décolonisation de l’éducation et de la société. Le second sujet d’étude concerne la pédagogie fondée sur l’art qui détermine le travail de la fondation pour la jeunesse Area Youth Foundation (AYF) à Kingston (Jamaïque). Les jeunes participants, issus en majorité de contextes socioéconomiques difficiles, acquièrent au cours de l’apprentissage la capacité d’exprimer leurs expériences et de les relier au changement social. Ils manifestent cette prise de conscience par la création de spectacles, de peintures murales, de romans-photos et d’autres réalisations artistiques. La troisième étude décrit et évalue le projet Honey Ant Reader à Alice Springs (Australie). Des enfants aborigènes et les adultes de leur communauté apprennent à écrire à la fois dans leur langue locale et en anglais australien standard, à l’aide de brochures reproduisant les récits autochtones transmis par les anciens de la collectivité et relatant les coutumes et traditions locales. L’auteure démontre que la pédagogie « freirienne » illustre dans chacune de ces trois situations la démarche de stimuler la création de savoirs en vue d’un changement social progressif, qui remplacent les connaissances enseignées préétablies. Cette démonstration soutient son analyse sur le degré de fidélité à l’esprit du chercheur et enseignant Paulo Freire, qui affirmait que dans notre recherche d’une société meilleure, nous devons inventer et réinventer le monde. Le second objectif de l’auteure, connexe au premier, consiste à soulever des questions sur la contribution éventuelle d’une éducation alignée sur la pédagogie freirienne à extraire le changement social du cercle de la culture pour l’élargir à la sphère publique.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Queensland University of TechnologyBrisbaneAustralia

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