Running head: APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

Application of Paulo Freires Learning Theory

Nancy Palate
California State University Monterey Bay

IST520 Learning Theories

Professor Fischer
February 23, 2016

APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Introduction..

Capstone Project....

Paulo Freires Learning Theory....

Theory Application Examples..

Target Audience

Limitations.

10

Conclusion

11

APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

Application of Paulo Freires Learning Theory
Paulo Freire gave rise to a type of popular and adult education that resonate with
educators and communities that value equity, respect, and the opportunity to dialogue about
issues that are relevant to students from a perspective where both the student and teacher are
enriched in the process of problem posing where students lives improve based on their own
learning. This paper examines the application of Freires instructional theory to my proposed
capstone project, the target audience, and the potential problems or limitations of applying this
theory to the project.
Capstone Project
Climate change is affecting the world around us, however, it becomes a social justice
issue when the most vulnerable populations, like those living in rural areas, die, become sick, or
are displaced due to the effects of global warming. Most of these communities do not know what
climate change is, its impact and implications, and the actions they can take to address climate
change and its consequences.
The report Indicators of Climate Change in California: Environmental Justice Impacts
issued by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, Mazur et al. (2010)
identified California rural towns as vulnerable communities who may be disproportionally

affected by the impacts of climate change, further stating that agricultural workers are more
exposed to high temperatures and that:
Certain groups do not have the resources or the ability to cope with climate change
induced impacts due to socioeconomic or inherent biological factors. For example, lowincome households are less likely to live in homes with air conditioning, and the rural
poor living at the wild land-urban interface may not have the resources to prevent, fight
and recover from wildfires. (p.34)
Although there may be information for these communities on climate change, the little
information that exists is either not accessible or impractical. The goal of my capstone project is
to equip community health workers, also called promotores, and community leaders in rural
California with knowledge that will help them mitigate the effects of climate change at a
personal, family, and community level based on their priorities.
The training will be accessible, practical, in Spanish and English, and designed with the
appropriate literacy and numeracy level of the audiences in mind. The instruction will include
information on the basic aspects of climate change its: definition, causes, consequences, and
practical ideas for how learners can mitigate the effects of climate change while saving them
money.
While training alone will not help rural communities understand climate change, adapt or
mitigate its effects, it can provide them with much needed information to make informed
decisions and to become engaged community members. Ideal training should also include
strategies for addressing climate change so that communities are given leadership and autonomy
at the time of defining their priorities and setting up action plans to address their concerns.
Paulo Freires Learning Theory
Paulo Freire was a Brazilian professor and philosopher who contributed greatly to the
field of education with his learning theories, among which are the emancipatory learning or

liberation pedagogy theories that added to previous learning theories such as the constructivism
theory and critical pedagogy.

APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

Constructivist theorists such as John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky and Paulo Freire believed that
it is through dialogue that students and teachers learn from each other, assign new meanings, or
build on previous knowledge (Hamilton, n.d). Freire, however, went beyond this theory by
adding that the traditional method of teaching, where teachers deposited knowledge in students,
which he called banking education, needs to be challenged because it perpetuates an oppressive
structure.
Freire considered the teacher the ultimate emancipator or liberator of students because
though inciting critical thinking in the students and re-presenting the students views of the
world, the teacher can help to liberate and open the mind of the student (Beckett, 2013). He
believed that while traditional teaching called for helping the student to problem-solve a problem
presented by the teacher, the role of the teacher needs to problem-pose.
In the problem-posing method the teacher invites the students to examine their realities as
problems that can be resolved with solutions that both the students and teachers investigate
thought a dialogue. According to this theory, teachers become co-investigators with the students.
Freire called the whole process, a process of concientizacion, which goes beyond raising
awareness about an issue to developing hope in changing the state of oppression to liberation, or
as Beckett described:
Freiresought to root our cultural elements that pervaded, dominated and divided groups
of people in Brazil and other countries after World War II, elements he summed up in the

term oppression. He did this by challenging the oppressed to see their world clearly,
consider the possibility of a better world and then fight to achieve it. (Beckett, 2013)

APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

Central to Freires educational system were the culture circles through which the
teacher and students learned by dialoguing about different themes presented usually as visual
representations or codifications. The role of the teacher in this culture circle is to help the
students to raise questions about their existing experiences or reality rather than passively
assimilating the codifications as simple information (Paulo Freire (19211997) - Conceptual
Tools, Philosophy of Education, Criticism. n.d.)
Freires theory major strengths lie in how he viewed dialogue between students and
teachers, which was not a new concept but one on which he added a sense of respect, humility,
and love by placing students and teachers as equals in both knowledge and ignorance, or as
described by Beckett, Students and teachers are, as he says, co-investigators of students reality.
Working together, they examine codifications which include representations of concrete realities
about which students know more than teachers and generative words about which teachers know
more than students. (Becket, 2013)
However, Freires theory has been criticized for not specifying the different types of
oppression that people experiment, namely to women and people of color. Additionally, his
theory has been described as utopic and impractical or as revolutionary and socialist, which
gained Freire many detractors and even caused his arrest and exile from Brazil at a certain time.
His theory has also been accused of promoting a Westernization view of the world where people

are asked to improve and question tradition, although that criticism has been challenged.
(Becket, 2013)

APPLICATION OF PAULO FREIRES LEARNING THEORY

Theory Application Examples
An investigation of a three-phase model of critical pedagogy based on Freires theory is
described in an article of the Health Education Journal as having looked at how the model can be
used for health education and health promotion programs. The three phases of this model are:
listening and naming; dialogue and reflection; and the promoting of transformative social action.
In this article, the model is described as effective for health education because it supports the
understanding that health is a holistic concept. (Mathews, 2013)
Critical health literacy or pedagogy as this article explains, provide tools that
communities can use to control the very things that affect their empowering them to make
informed and autonomous decisions.
Listening and naming phase. During this phase the students are presented with a code
or representation which is usually a graphic, a video, a piece of art, or any other thoughtprovoking code. This exercise is designed to draw real-world experiences and views from the
students daily lives.
Dialogue and reflection phase. This phase calls for the students to critically ask
questions to challenge the inequities and assumptions as well as to brainstorm on ideas of
practices that are more equitable. This can be accomplished, as the article describes, by using the
SHOWED Model: What do we See here?; what is really Happening?; how does the story relate

to Our lives?; Why did the person acquire the problem?; how is it possible for this person to
become Empowered?; and what can we Do about it? (Mathews, 2013)
Promotion of transformative social action phase. The last phase is where the reflection
and dialogue done in the previous phases meet concrete practical actions that lead the students to
changes that are tangible. The article provides examples that range from campaigning for policy
change to raising awareness and education.
The capstone project will incorporate the SHOWED model questions during an exercise
to allow training participants to indentify the problems that climate change represents for them
and their communities and to brainstorm ideas to mitigate its impact.
An additional application of Freires theory in popular education and critical pedagogy
used by environmental educators and describes in an article of the Journal of Contemporary
Water Research & Education as asset-based learning and teaching details how asset-based
community development or ABCD helps to eliminate the bias and labels that exists in educators
with views of deficit instead of assets are brought to the classroom. The author describes how
traditional approaches perceived and labeled target groups in terms of deficits and lackspoverty, unemployment, lack of education and skills. This is a very disempowering discourse,
enlisting poor or disadvantaged groups as clients into a welfare system that maintained them
in a dependent position. (Missingham, 2013)
The capstone project will incorporate an activity suggested by the article in which at the
beginning of the training students are placed in small groups to list their experience, skills, and
talents; their connections or networks, and the institutions that they view as assets in their
community. The goal of this activity is to evidence the contribution of the students to the training
and takes an asset-base approach to education and learning.

Target Audience
In the book Connecting on Climate Change: A Guide to Effective Climate Change
Communication, an ideal messenger for climate change is someone whose identities, values,
and group affiliations are similar to those of the audience; someone the audience trusts and
respects; and someone who can identify and connect with the audiences everyday needs and
concerns. (p. 10).
Accordingly, the learners of the climate change training will be promotores and
community leaders who may work as volunteers or paid staff of agencies or organizations, who
may hold different titles ranging from health educators, navigators, community health workers,
organizers, or leaders, but for whom the unifying factors are their commitment to the well-being
of their community and the trust that their communities have placed on them.
Training participants will be promotores or community leaders who share some of the
characteristics that describe promotores across the world, which include being empathetic,
creative and resourceful advocates and role models for their community, and willing to help
others.
The learners do not necessarily have to live in the rural town, but they have to be
effective messengers of this community. Some may have a formal education and will be working
as volunteers, teachers, health educators, however, most are recognized as promotores by their
community because they are the person who links the community with resources and provide
health information.
Freires theory founded or strengthened educational techniques such as popular
education, participatory learning, and critical pedagogy which have been very effective in
communities that have a history of oppression like the communities of rural areas.
Recognizing that climate change impacts will place an additional burden on those that are
already disproportionally affected by many other issues, the facilitation of the capstone project

should be one where the training facilitator is not an expert bringing the benefit of her
knowledge and authority to the community, but rather should see local community members as
the experts on their own local conditions, resources, knowledge, culture, values, priorities for
change etc. From this perspective the development worker establishes a relationship based on
dialogue, partnership, and facilitation. (Missingham, 2013)
Limitations
The capstone project will be conducted by staff from the California Department of Public
Health in all of the rural areas of California counties. The mission of the Department is to
optimize the health and well-being of Californians and as such, its Office of Health Equity
houses the Climate Change and Public Health Team who work on policy, education, preparation,
and mitigation programs related to climate change.
Due to the Departments long review process and bureaucratic constraints, the
implementation of the training may take time. This has the potential of making obsolete some of
the information of the training.
Training materials and facilitators will not be allowed to talk about policy development
even if that comes out during the promotion of transformative social action phase of the critical
pedagogy due to a legal limitation of the Department.
Additional expected limitations include potential political conflict of talking about
climate change which is still considered controversial among certain conservative communities
and the view held by many community members in California that climate change is distant and
not affecting their everyday lives.

Since the capstone project is designed for community health workers and leaders in rural
towns and rural towns tend to be small, finding enough participants interested and available may
pose a challenge to resources as more than one training needs to be planned for those
communities.
Conclusion
Paulo Freires theory of emancipator learning led the way to many educational
approaches that have proven effective for oppressed communities such as those living in rural
towns where educators and students find in the dialogue, respect, humility, and love, all tenets of
Freires theory, the fertile ground for learning, where both the teacher and the students are treated
equally and where knowledge leads to a change that frees the minds of the learners and where
meaning is shared.

References:
Beckett, K. (2013). Paulo freire and the concept of education. Educational Philosophy and
Theory, 45(1), 49-62.
Gordon, M. (2009). Toward a pragmatic discourse of constructivism: Reflections on lessons
from practice. Educational Studies, 45(1), 39-58.
Hamilton, S. (n.d). Opposite Theory of Constructivism. Synonym. Retrieved from
http://classroom.synonym.com/opposite-theory-constructivism-7403.html
Lewis, T. (2010). Paulo freire's last laugh: Rethinking critical pedagogy's funny bone through
jacques ranciere. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(5-6), 635-648.
Markowitz, E., Hodge, C., & Harp, G. (2014). Connecting on climate: A guide to effective
climate change communication. NY: Columbia University.
Matthews, C. (2014). Critical pedagogy in health education. Health Education Journal, 73(5),
600-609.
Mazur, L., Milanes, C., Randles, K., & Siegel, D. (2010). Indicators of climate change in
California: Environmental justice impacts. (p.34). A report from the Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Retrieved from:
http://www.oehha.ca.gov/multimedia/epic/pdf/ClimateChangeEJ123110.pdf
Missingham, B. (2013). Participatory learning and popular education strategies for water
education. Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, 150(1), 34-40.

Paulo Freire (19211997) - Conceptual Tools, Philosophy of Education, Criticism. (n.d.)

Education Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1998/Freire-Paulo-1921-1997.html