what is problem posing education

Problem Posing Education – 6 Key Characteristics

problem posing education definition and example

Problem-posing education is an active learning strategy where a teacher or student poses a problem and the class collaborates to find answers.

The six key characteristics of problem-posing education (PPE) are:

Learners are conscious and capable.
Learning takes place through problem-solving.
Learning must be practical.
Students and teachers are co-investigators.
The teacher learns from the students.
Learning is a Process of Becoming

PPE was first presented by Christian Socialist and progressive educator Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed . It is a progressive-democratic teaching strategy , popular in 21 st Century education .

It is juxtaposed to banking education, also theorized by Freire, which involves transmission-style teaching and passive learning .

Key Characteristics of Problem-Posing Education

Six key characteristics of PPE include: (1) Learners are conscious and capable. (2) Learning takes place through problem-solving ; (3) Learning must be practical; (4) Students and teachers are co-investigators; (5) The teacher learns from the students; (6) Learning is the process of becoming.

Below is an outline of each key characteristic.

1. Learners are Conscious and Capable

Problem-posing education respects that students are active and agentic learners.

In banking education, learners are considered passive recipients of knowledge. They are not presumed to have any prior knowledge or inherent intelligence. Their job is to simply absorb information that is deposited into their minds by their teacher.

However, from a PPE perspective, Freire argues that learners are in fact conscious and capable. It, therefore, follows that:

Cognitive Approaches are best: Learning occurs through cognitive processes. In other words, we learn when our minds are exercised and we’re asked to think hard about something.
Prior Knowledge matters : Students’ prior knowledge and existing intelligence should be used to help them think about new topics.

2. Learning takes place through Problem-Solving

One of the best ways to support students’ learning is by presenting problems to them for them to find ways to solve.

Instead of students being given answers, they are given problems. Once a student is given a problem, they need to use their intelligence and research skills to seek out an answer.

The answer is not given or ‘gifted’ to the student like in the banking approach. Instead, the answer must be discovered by the students alone.

Some key considerations when posing problems include:

Both the teacher and the student can pose a problem. It is not just the teacher’s role to come up with problems, although they can and do. Sometimes, a student will come to the class with a problem. It is appropriate and encouraged that the class works together to come up with an answer to the problem that was posed.
The answer is not already known. Sometimes the teacher may have the answer in their mind, sometimes, they may not. But even if the teacher knows the answer, they should not tell the students. The students need to come up with it themselves. Furthermore, the teacher might change their mind after new knowledge is discovered by the students – so, the teacher needs to keep an open mind to the knowledge discovered through the process.

3. Learning must be Practical

Problem Posing Education believes that practical education is more important than theoretical education.

Freire did not like that 20 th Century education was so theoretical. Information was presented to students without context or consideration for how it would be used outside of school.

Purely theoretical information can be bad because:

Students feel like it has no relevance to them and their lives.
It is hard to remember because students don’t have any lived experiences of using it.
It may not be of any use to students in the future.

So, Freire argued that all learning should be both theoretical and practical. Any theoretical information that is presented needs to be linked to real life. Students need to know why and how the theoretical information impacts their lives.

Benefits of practical learning include:

Students can use what they are learning in real life.
Learning occurs through engagement with the world, the discovery of facts, and trial and error.
Knowledge is contextualized, making it easier to store and recall.

4. Students and Teacher are Co-investigators

Teachers should not be the authoritative holders of knowledge but rather should be open-minded investigators alongside their students.

Freire argued that the banking model of education separated students and teachers. The teacher was the knowledge giver and the student the knowledge receiver.

This created a power imbalance where the teacher held all the power, and students were unable to exercise any power of their own.

When the teacher has all the power, students:

Learn to be passive followers.
Do not learn democratic values.
Fail to develop critical thinking skills.

Freire argued that the role of the teacher needs to be changed. Teachers should now be seen as co-investigators.

When teachers are co-investigators:

The teacher does not have to be an expert on every topic.
The students and teachers work as a team rather than having opposing roles.
Students are given a chance to exercise agency (the ability to impact the learning process) in the classroom.

5. The Teacher learns from the Students

If teachers are no longer the authoritarian in the classroom, new possibilities emerge.

It would not be possible for the teacher to learn alongside the students.

But Freire takes this future: the teacher might also learn things from the students!

This is because:

The teacher respects that students have prior knowledge that might be useful in the classroom.
The teacher doesn’t presume to know all the answers. Answers unfold through the problem solving exercises.
The teacher should be open to changing their mind when new information is introduced by the students.

As Freire argues:

“The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own.” (Freire, 1970, p. 81)

6. Learning is a Process of Becoming

Freire believed that learning is an endless process. Teachers and students combined are constantly learning throughout their lives.

He therefore argued for learning to be considered a ‘process of becoming’. Whenever we learn something new, we change our ideas and even ourselves. We become more knowledgeable, wiser, thoughtful, etc.

Problem-posing education is very beneficial for the process of becoming because the things we learn are directly relevant to the troubles in our lives. We come across a problem and we consider how to overcome it. In the process, we learn new things and ‘become’ more knowledgeable in the process.

Pros and Cons of Problem-Posing Education

Benefits (advantages).

Benefits of problem-posing education include:

Students learn by actively discovering and examining new knowledge rather than passively absorbing information.
Students and teachers are partners in learning, which gives students a sense of empowerment and ownership over their learning environment.
Teachers do not feel like they have to know all the answers to the questions students have.
Students learn about phenomena that have relevance to their everyday lives, and don’t just learn theoretical ideas.
Students are encouraged to develop problem-solving, creative and critical thinking skills.
Open communication and social learning are encouraged, helping students build communication skills and learn from one another.

Limitations (Disadvantages)

Limitations of problem-posing education include:

The teacher must relinquish control over the classroom and needs to accept uncertainty about how a lesson will turn out.
Sometimes theoretical ideas need to be taught, and these ideas may best be presented using direct instruction .
Learning is more difficult: students need to exercise cognitive strategies, higher-order thinking sills and active learning strategies that require cognitive load.

If you have any more limitations to add, email me! chris [at] helpfulprofessor.com

Problem Posing vs Banking Education

Problem posing helps educators overcome the damaging practice of banking education and the two are seen as opposites.

Banking Education

The banking approach was widespread in the 20 th Century. It involved teacher transmission of information to ‘fill’ students’ minds like they are empty vessels waiting to be loaded up with facts.

In banking education:

Teachers teach through transmission or dictation.
Students are passive learners.
Students must memorize the information given to the students.
The teacher has all the power, the student has none.
The teacher is supposed to hold all knowledge and their knowledge is unquestionable.
The student is seen as unintelligent and having no prior knowledge

Banking education had several harmful effects:

It denied students the right to freedom of thought, critical thinking or creativity.
It created a dualism between the teacher as knowledge holder and student as knowledge receiver.
It denied that students have prior knowledge or innate intellect.
It prepared students to be compliant workers in capitalist economies.

Problem Posing

According to Freire, the way to ‘liberate’ students from this damaging form of education was to change the roles of the teacher and student . Students needed to be empowered to take control of their own learning.

‘Problem posing’ would help achieve student empowerment.

In a Problem-Posing Approach:

Instead of the teacher being the knowledge holder, no one would be.
A problem would be presented by someone in the class and the class would have to discover an answer together.
The student is seen as an active learner capable of reaching conclusions through the use of cognitive skills .
The teacher is seen as a co-learner.
The student’s prior knowledge is used to help them understand a topic.

A problem-posing approach would aim to:

Develop free-thinking students who came to conclusions using logic rather than repeating what their teacher said.
Create democratic classrooms where the teacher did not domineer and impose their beliefs upon the students.
Embrace and encourage students’ use of prior knowledge to learn new information.
Encourage higher-order cognition.

Final Thoughts

Problem-posing education is an active learning strategy that empowers students in the classroom. It encourages learning that is connected to problems that are relevant and interesting to students’ lives. It requires changing the roles of the teacher and students so the teacher relinquishes authority, embraces uncertainty, and encourages class co-investigation.

Article contents

Paulo Freire
Peter Roberts Peter Roberts University of Canterbury
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.10
Published online: 29 March 2017

The work of the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire (1921–1997) has been extraordinarily influential. Freire’s ideas have been taken up not just by educationists, but also by scholars and practitioners in a wide range of other fields, including theology, philosophy, sociology, politics, women’s studies, nursing, counseling, social work, disability studies, and peace studies. In educational circles, Freire is regarded as one of the founding figures of critical pedagogy. He is best known for his adult literacy programs in impoverished communities and for his classic early text: Pedagogy of the Oppressed . As a writer, he was most prolific in the last ten years of his life. His work advances an ideal of humanization through transformative reflection and action, and stresses the importance of developing key epistemological, ethical, and educational virtues, such as openness, humility, tolerance, attentiveness, rigor, and political commitment. The themes of love and hope figure prominently throughout his work. Freire was opposed to authoritarian, technicist, and neoliberal pedagogical practices. He argued that education is a necessarily nonneutral process and favored a critical, problem-posing, dialogical approach to teaching and learning. While acclaimed by many, Freire also attracted his share of criticism. He responded to some of the key questions raised by others, while also leaving open a number of areas of inquiry for further investigation.

neoliberalism

Paulo Freire: A Brief Intellectual Biography

One of four children in a middle-class family, Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born on September 19, 1921 in the city of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambucu in the northeast of Brazil. His mother was a seamstress. His father had served in the Brazilian army and was subsequently employed by the Pernambuco Military Police but was forced into early retirement with arterial sclerosis (Kirylo, 2011 , pp. 4–5). When Freire was ten, his family, struggling under the effects of the Great Depression, moved to Jaboatão. Freire had learned to read and write at an early age, the outdoors serving as his classroom, but hunger took its toll on his performance at school. As his family’s circumstances improved, so too did his results. Freire’s grasp of the Portuguese language was such that he found himself, while still a secondary school student, taking on a teaching role with others (Schugurensky, 2011 , p. 15). While attentive to matters of linguistic structure and syntax, he was motivated more by the beauty of the written word and its connection to the lived realities of learners (Freire, 1996 ).

Clearly predisposed to teaching as a vocation, Freire nonetheless did not take up this calling immediately. His initial university studies were in law, notwithstanding his emerging philosophical and educational interests. As a young man, Freire suffered bouts of depression, later linking these to the death of his father in 1934 , among other significant events in his adolescence (Freire, 1994 ). In his early twenties, Freire married Elza Oliveira, from whom he was to learn much that would inform his work as an adult educator. Freire’s time in the field of law was short-lived, and he went on to a position with the Social Service of Industry (SESI), a role that sharpened his understanding of class differences. His political consciousness was honed further through his involvement, with Elza, in a radical Christian movement committed to the principle of social justice through the liberation of oppressed groups (Roberts, 2000 ).

Freire returned to university, completing a doctoral thesis with a focus on adult literacy. His distinctive approach to work in this field was already gaining attention, and he was asked to lead the Cultural Extension Service at the University of Recife. In 1963 he was appointed Director of a national literacy program. He and his co-workers were highly successful in enabling adults to acquire basic reading and writing skills within a matter of weeks or months (after as little as 40–45 hours of teaching contact time), in part because Freire fostered a strong link between the written word and the world of the participants. The opening up of opportunities for the development of a more critical understanding of Brazilian society did not go unnoticed, and when the military seized power in 1964 Freire was regarded as a threat and forced into exile. He spent five years in Chile, working with adults in a cultural extension program under the auspices of the Chilean Agrarian Reform Corporation. He completed his first book during this period: Education: The Practice of Freedom (Freire, 1976 ). (This work also appears under the title Education for Critical Consciousness .)

In 1969 Freire received an invitation to serve as a scholar in residence at Harvard University, and in that capacity completed the two essays that would become Cultural Action for Freedom (Freire, 1972b ). In 1970 he took up a role with the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was to stay for a decade. With the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Freire’s life as an educationist would change forever. The book created an almost immediate impact and would go on to become one of the biggest selling texts ever written by an educationist. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a ) was released at a time of growing unrest among educational and social commentators. It was one of several “subversive” educational texts published in the late 1960s and early 1970s—other examples included Postman and Weingartner’s ( 1971 ) Teaching as a Subversive Activity , Ivan Illich’s ( 1971 ) Deschooling Society , and Paul Goodman’s ( 1971 ) Compulsory Miseducation —and generated much discussion and debate. Freire was in high demand as a speaker throughout the 1970s. He also served in consultancy roles for adult education programs in Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe. By the end of the decade, the political tide in Brazil was starting to change, and in 1980 Freire was able to return to his native country.

During the 1980s he was busier than ever, with academic responsibilities as a university professor, continuing requests to visit other parts of the world, and involvement with the Brazilian Workers’ Party. Freire was a supporter of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (“Lula”), who would later become President of Brazil. After a slower period in his writing career, with just two key works in the decade from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s (Freire, 1978 , 1985 ), Freire gained renewed momentum in the published development of his ideas through a succession of “dialogical” books: A Pedagogy for Liberation (Freire & Shor, 1987 ), Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (Freire & Macedo, 1987 ), Learning to Question (Freire & Faundez, 1989 ), and We Make the Road by Walking (Horton & Freire, 1990 ). Another collaborative work based on a series of dialogues in the 1980s with a group of Mexican academics, Paulo Freire on Higher Education (Escobar, Fernandez, & Guevara-Niebla, with Freire, 1994 ), would be released in the 1990s. These works were constructed from conversations between the authors, prompted by specific educational questions and later edited and organized thematically for publication in book form. They were, in their structure, style, and substance, broadly consistent with the pedagogical principles Freire espoused, though each volume had its own unique characteristics. The book with Ira Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation (Freire & Shor, 1987 ), was especially important in highlighting some of the educational, ethical, and political challenges faced by teachers who attempt to enact Freirean ideas in First World contexts.

At the end of the 1980s, Freire took another significant step in his educational career, accepting a role as Secretary of Education in the municipality of São Paulo. This was a major undertaking, with run-down schools and grinding poverty in many of the urban educational communities for which Freire was responsible. Some substantial gains were made during Freire’s tenure as Secretary (O’Cadiz, Wong, & Torres, 1998 ; Torres, 1994a ; Weiner, 2003 ), but Freire was by this stage keen to return to his writing, and he resigned from his position in 1991 .

The productivity that had characterized Freire’s scholarly output in the late 1980s continued in the 1990s, with a flurry of writing activity. Freire’s second marriage, to Ana Maria Araujo (after Elza had died in the 1980s), was significant in allowing him to enhance and extend his intellectual work. Ana Maria was a formidable intellectual in her own right, and her notes in some of Freire’s later publications provide a valuable resource for other scholars. Pedagogy of the City (Freire, 1993 ) reflected on Freire’s work as Secretary of Education; Pedagogy of Hope (Freire, 1994 ) was a revisiting of ideas, questions, and criticisms raised in response to Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a ); Letters to Cristina (Freire, 1996 ) fleshed out elements of Freire’s educational biography and philosophy; and Pedagogy of the Heart (Freire, 1997a ) addressed connections between pedagogy and politics. Freire’s views were also captured in a number of notable shorter pieces, including a dialogue with Donaldo Macedo published in Harvard Educational Review (Freire & Macedo, 1995 ) and a chapter in Mentoring the Mentor (Freire, 1997b ), an edited collection devoted to his work.

Seemingly at the height of his intellectual powers, Freire died of heart failure on May 2, 1997 . He had been a smoker for much of his adult life, regretting this greatly in his later years as he contemplated the consequences his habit would have for his health and longevity. Freire’s work continued to live on, with the posthumous publication of several books over the next decade: Pedagogy of Freedom (Freire, 1998a ), Teachers as Cultural Workers (Freire, 1998b ), Politics and Education (Freire, 1998c ), Pedagogy of Indignation (Freire, 2004 ), and Daring to Dream (Freire, 2007 ). These publications, together with others from the 1990s, were pivotal in allowing Freire to address pressing questions relating to teachers and teaching, the process of inquiry, educational virtues, politics, and neoliberalism, among other key themes. In the last decade of his life, Freire had deepened, extended, and reworked aspects of the theory first developed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and had pushed his thinking in new directions with the prompting of his intellectual collaborators. Interest in his work has shown no signs of diminishing, with numerous books, chapters, and articles on Freirean themes having been published in the years following his death (Roberts, 2010 ).

The Ontological, Epistemological and Ethical Basis to Freire’s Thought

Freire’s approach to education is underpinned by a complex ontology, epistemology, and ethic. Over the course of his writing career, Freire drew on the work of writers from a range of different intellectual traditions—liberalism, humanism, phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, radical Catholicism, critical theory, and postmodernism—in developing his ideas (Mackie, 1980 ; Mayo, 1999 ; Morrow & Torres, 2002 ; Peters, 1999 ; Roberts, 2000 ; Schugurensky, 2011 ; Webster, 2016 ). He was an eclectic but systematic thinker, weaving insights from others with his own ideas to build a coherent educational theory. He demonstrated a willingness to listen to others, modifying, reinterpreting, and adding to his ideas over time. He was prompted by his own reflections, by constructive criticism, and by changes in Brazilian and world politics. There would, he discovered, be no shortage of new problems to address as policies and practices changed.

If Freire’s work is examined holistically, it is not difficult to identify a number of key principles that remained consistent across his corpus of published writings. At the same time, and in keeping with his ontological position, there is a certain “unfinished” quality to his work, an openness that allows others to continue building on his legacy. There is no one best way to characterize his theoretical orientation, but Stanley Aronowitz’s ( 1993 ) description of Freire as a “radical democratic humanist” provides a helpful starting point. This implies a synthesis of different bodies of work and in particular signals the integration of the philosophical with the political in Freirean pedagogy. The concept of humanization lies at the heart of Freire’s work, linking the different elements of his philosophy, politics, and pedagogy together.

Humanization as Freire understands it is a process of becoming more fully human, and this has both ontological and historical dimensions (Freire, 1972a ). It is ontological because it is essential to what it means to be human. It is a “vocation,” something we are all meant to pursue. But humanization takes place in a social context; it is pursued not in isolation, or merely as an intellectual process, but through our actions, with others, in the world. Humanization is thus also an historical vocation. Humans have a distinctive ability to see themselves in an historical light. As temporal beings, we can look back at the immediate or more distant past, ponder the present, and imagine possible futures. We are fundamentally creative beings, shaping history and culture while also being shaped by the structures, policies, practices, and ideas of the past and present. As human beings, we also have the ability to reflect on our activities in ways that are not evident, to the same degree or in the same ways, elsewhere in the animal kingdom (Freire, 1976 ). We can ask questions, pose problems, and consider consequences. We can wonder how the world might be otherwise and take steps to change what we see and experience. From a Freirean perspective, we remain unfinished beings, always in a process of becoming. We never reach a point where we can say we are “complete” as human beings; there will always be more work to do.

Freire’s concept of humanization was informed by his reading of Hegel and Marx, by phenomenologists such as Husserl and humanists such as Erich Fromm, by the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and by elements of existentialist thought (Mayo, 1999 ; McLaren, 2000 ; Morrow & Torres, 2002 ; Roberts, 2000 ; Webster, 2016 ). From Hegel and Marx, Freire adopted a dialectical understanding of the nature of reality. He accepted the key Hegelian notions of contradiction, negation, and change, but emphasized, following Marx, the relevance of these ideas not just for the realm of consciousness but also for the material world (Torres, 1994b ; McLaren, 2000 ). For Freire, it is the dialectical relation between consciousness (thinking, feeling, and willing) and material reality (both “natural” and “social”) that is crucial from an educational perspective. Through the constant interaction between these two spheres, change occurs. We form ideas, or experience emotions, or will ourselves to do something, and act on the basis of these inner promptings to change material reality. But the reality we create, and constantly recreate, also “acts back” on us, shaping patterns and possibilities for thought. Freire is clear, however, that while we may be “conditioned” by material structures, policies, and practices, this does not mean we are ever fully determined by them (see Freire, 1997a , 1998a ). He wants to retain a notion of critical human agency, while also acknowledging (with Marx) that some groups play a more powerful and prominent role than others in shaping how we understand ourselves, others, and the world.

How do we become more fully human? For Freire, it is through engaging in critical, dialogical praxis (Mayo, 2004 ; Roberts, 2000 ). The classic account of praxis in Freire’s work is to be found in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a ). There, Freire speaks of praxis as reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. Reflection is a form of inner cognitive activity that is more than mere conscious apprehension. Reflection may be prompted by curiosity, or by a troubling incident, or via a deliberate effort to address a problem. Reflection is never a completely solitary process; it is always, even if only indirectly, social in nature. We learn to reflect through our interaction with others and the world. Our existence as social beings bears on both the content and the manner of our reflection. As a concept, reflection integrates two apparently opposite tendencies: movement and stillness. To be reflective demands a certain calmness, an ability to wait patiently, and to pay attention. Reflection is a kind of contemplation, and yet, for Freire it is more than that. We can remain calm in the middle of a literal or metaphorical storm (the latter might include situations of great distress, social discord, violent verbal or physical clashes, the pressure of workplace demands, or any number of other turbulent scenarios). In a world that never fully sits still, reflection can anchor us, direct us, and focus our intellectual and emotional energies. But reflection must be constantly renewed. As we act on our reflections, changing the world in doing so, we are faced with a transformed reality that itself demands further reflection. This is not a linear, mechanical process but a dynamic one, with a continuous, often subtle and unnoticed, interplay between reflection and action. Reflection, then, is also a form of movement.

Action is pivotal to our development as human beings and is an essential element in the process of transformation. To act is to harness the capacities we have as physical, intellectual, and emotional beings. Action, like reflection, sets us in motion. It allows us to test ideas, express our creativity, and become agents of historical change. Given the circumstances with which he was dealing in his work as an adult educator, action for Freire was closely connected with politics (see Freire, 1972a , 1972b , 1976 ). In the northeast of Brazil, Freire witnessed malnutrition so severe that children suffered permanent damage to their cognitive faculties. For many communities, access to healthcare was severely restricted. Safe drinking water would often be in short supply. Educational opportunities were limited. Those who were deemed illiterate could not vote and were thus denied the most basic form of political participation. In both urban and rural areas, workers were often exploited and mistreated. Merely talking about these problems was not enough; this, Freire said, would amount to nothing more than “verbalism” (Freire, 1972a ). Political action was needed, and this, Freire recognized, would pose enormous challenges.

Freire advocated not mere reform, which would leave the underlying political structures intact, but radical, revolutionary change. He was a radical in the sense that he wanted to go to roots of the problems he observed and experienced. He was not naïve about the obstacles that stood in the way of this kind of change. In rural communities, landowners would fight to maintain their control over peasant workers. In urban environments an emerging class of corporate elites would push aggressively to keep wages low. The conservative wing of the Catholic Church would also seek to preserve the status quo. Political change would, he realized, involve a long-term, multifaceted process of struggle.

To impede others in their pursuit of humanizing praxis is dehumanizing. Evidence of dehumanization was all around Freire as he lived and worked in Brazil. He argued, however, that while dehumanization was a historical reality it was not something we had to accept as inevitable (Freire, 1972a ). Dehumanization is manifested, in concrete terms, through oppressive structures, policies, practices, relations, and ideas. Addressing oppression requires an act of liberation . Liberation, Freire made plain, is never simply given; it emerges through critical, reflective, dialogical action. Liberation demands struggle and sacrifice. It is politically difficult and existentially draining; indeed, liberation is often intimately connected with suffering and despair (Chen, 2016 ; Roberts, 2016 ). Liberation is not an endpoint to be reached by individuals; it is an ongoing, social process.

While the struggle against oppression is one of the defining features of Freire’s approach to liberation, this on its own does not capture adequately what he means by the term. Liberation also entails the development of key virtues, the most important of which is love . It is possible to see Freire’s entire life’s work as a pedagogy of love (cf. Darder, 2002 , 2003 ; Fraser, 1997 ). Freire’s particular interest is in a kind of “armed” love that grapples with the complexities of social, cultural, and political change. From Che Guevara, Freire adopted the principle that love is a revolutionary virtue (see Freire, 1972a ; McLaren, 2000 ). Love is commitment, care, and respect in our relations with others. It arises from our recognition that we are all engaged, each in our own ways, in a process of trying to make sense of ourselves and the world in which we live. In the field of education, love is significant in other ways as well. Teachers demonstrate love in the way they work with students, and scholarly activity demands a love of our domains of study.

Other virtues of importance for the Freirean notion of liberation include humility, openness, tolerance, trust, hope, and political commitment. Humility arises from the recognition that there is always more to learn. It is also connected with our ability to see in ourselves, as in others, frailties and weaknesses, and to accept these imperfections as part of the human condition. Openness is necessary if we are to make the most of the learning opportunities that present themselves to us. To do so, we need to be able to trust those with whom we work. Tolerance, which does not mean giving up the right to express one’s own views, is required if we are to hear what others have to say and respond with a sense of fairness and equanimity. Hope is an expression of the human capacity to struggle and to strive, to imagine and build better worlds. A world characterized by oppression and despair does not cancel out hope; it gives it its reason for being. Without political commitment, the dream of social transformation cannot occur. (See further, Freire, 1972a , 1997a , 1998b , 2007 ; Roberts, 2010 , 2015 , 2016 ; Rossatto, 2005 .)

Freire’s epistemology builds on his ontology and ethic. Knowing for Freire is not a form of isolated, individual, abstract, purely cognitive activity. It is social and practical in nature, and it involves not just the intellect but feelings and the body as well (see Borg & Mayo, 2000 ; Freire, 1996 , 1998a ). Knowing emerges and continues to develop as we interact with an ever-changing world. Knowledge thus remains necessarily incomplete (Roberts, 2000 ). In addition to the virtues discussed above, Freire identifies a number of attributes specific to the process of knowing. Knowers are curious, restless beings, always open to further learning. They adopt an investigative and inquiring frame of mind when addressing a question, issue, or problem. Knowing takes effort; it requires discipline and persistence. Knowers probe and prod, often in places neglected by others or in ways that are novel and creative. Knowing is a risky process. It can be destabilizing and upsetting. It can throw up contradictions and tensions that hitherto had remained submerged or unacknowledged. As knowers, we must be able to pay attention, maintaining our focus on the object of study while also retaining a certain distance from it (see Freire & Shor, 1987 ). Knowing involves a willingness to not only accept, but actively embrace, a degree of uncertainty in our lives. Those who are, as Freire liked to put it, “too certain of their certainties,” often impede the process of knowing not only for themselves but for others as well (cf. Freire, 1997a ).

Freirean Pedagogy

The critical and dialogical elements of humanizing praxis come to the fore in Freire’s integration of educational theory with pedagogical practice. The reflective, critical character of Freirean praxis is embodied in the complex and controversial notion of conscientization . Freire first employed this term (in its original Portuguese form as conscientização ) in the late 1960s. He did not invent the word, but he was the most prominent thinker to adopt it.

In Education: The Practice of Freedom (Freire, 1976 ) Freire explains conscientization by reference to different modes of consciousness that had prevailed among particular groups at given times in Brazil’s history. Magical (semi-intransitive) consciousness, dominant in rural peasant communities, was associated with a kind of resigned acceptance of social problems. The focus was very much on hand-to-mouth survival. Among such communities, difficulties experienced in daily life would often be attributed to “God’s will” or fate or destiny. Naïve consciousness, common among the new urban populations that emerged in Brazil in the 20th century , accepted the importance of change, but only of a reformist kind. The emphasis among these groups was on polemics, performance, and appearances rather than careful historical or structural analysis. Critical consciousness, the mode of thought to which Freire himself was committed, is characterized by depth in the interpretation and addressing of problems, a willingness to engage in dialogue, and a readiness to accept the new without rejecting the old simply because it is old, among other qualities (Freire, 1976 ).

Freire did not intend these different modes of consciousness to be seen as fixed, sequential steps or stages in a linear process of individual change (Roberts, 1996a ). Nor did he want conscientization to be regarded as a kind of educational silver bullet that could somehow solve all social problems. Frustrated by what he regarded as frequent examples of misunderstanding, Freire stopped using the term conscientização for some years, but retained the ideas of cultivating an informed conscience (Liu, 2014 ) and developing a critical orientation toward the world as fundamental aims of education.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a ), Freire draws a distinction between two opposing approaches to education. Banking education relies on a one-way, monological process of transmission from a teacher to students. Students are expected to listen passively and to receive and accept the content of the teacher’s narration without question. Knowledge is seen as a gift possessed by teachers, to be bestowed upon—banked into—ignorant students. Freire was strongly opposed to banking education and offered an alternative in the form of problem-posing education (sometimes called authentic education or liberating education). Problem-posing education begins with the assumption that both teachers and students have something important to contribute to an educational situation. It builds on, but does not rest with (i.e., endorse uncritically), the knowledge and experience students bring with them to any educational setting (cf. Shor, 1980 ). Knowledge is regarded not as a neutral, static body of information and skills to be passed on from an all-powerful teacher to waiting students; rather it is seen as something that is actively constructed and contested. The focus is on the posing and addressing of problems rather than the issuing of answers. Questioning, critique, and debate are encouraged. Dialogue becomes central to the pedagogical process.

Problem-posing education is not the same as problem-solving education. Freire’s support for the former had an ontological, epistemological, and political grounding. In seeing human beings and knowledge as necessarily incomplete, as always in a process of becoming, Freire recognized that while one problem was being addressed, others would arise. Moreover, the deep social injustices that provided the backdrop for Freire’s work in Brazil did not lend themselves to easy, quick-fix “solutions”; they required long-term, ongoing political work. Freire also wanted to signal the educational importance of the very act of seeing something as a problem to be investigated. This process is itself a subversive act in a world where some ideas have become so deeply entrenched that they are seldom questioned. This does not mean all things—all implied or overtly expressed ideas—must be questioned all the time. This is, of course, an impossibility, in both theoretical and practical terms. For some ideas to be questioned, others must simultaneously be accepted. And in day-to-day pedagogical practice, there is only so much time that can be devoted to given activities. Teachers and students will always need to prioritize their efforts, deciding which areas of study warrant deeper investigation than others.

Problem-posing or liberating education is not a “method” but an approach or orientation to education built on a distinctive understanding of human beings and the world (Freire, 1987 , 1997b ; Macedo, 1997 ; Roberts, 1996b ). It is possible to identify key principles or features or themes in Freirean pedagogy—e.g., the development of certain virtues, or the commitment to dialogue, critical consciousness, and humanizing praxis—but these cannot be reduced to a “method” or a list of methods. Freire warned repeatedly against the dangers of attempting to transport ideas uncritically from one context to another. Methods, he insisted, should not become universal prescriptions but must be determined according to the particulars of a given situation. What methods are selected will depend on who is being taught, by whom, for what, when, where, and why.

The defining feature of banking education is not “teacher talk” but its authoritarian nature. Freire stressed that banking education forms part of a wider oppressive social system, where the interests of some groups are favored over others (see further, Beckett, 2013 ; Jackson, 2016 ; Roberts, 2000 ). In explicitly or implicitly suppressing difference and dissent, and in denying the possibility of critical agency in the co-construction of knowledge, banking education dehumanizes both the teacher and the students. Banking education treats students as objects rather than knowing subjects in the learning process. It is manipulative and controlling in character. It is not, however, the presence of a teacher who speaks and students who listen that in itself makes banking education oppressive. A university lecture need not be an example of banking education (see Escobar et al., 1994 ; Freire & Shor, 1987 ). Listening does not have to be passive acceptance. The key is active engagement with the ideas, whether this is via speech or quiet critical reflection or writing, or in some other way. Liberating education is not an “anything goes” affair; it must, Freire argues, have a strong sense of structure, direction, and rigor (Freire & Shor, 1987 ; Horton & Freire, 1990 ; Roberts, 1996b ).

While Freire did want to break down traditional barriers between teachers and students, this did not mean he saw no differences between them in their respective roles and responsibilities. He was emphatic that he was a teacher and not merely a facilitator (Freire & Macedo, 1995 ). A teacher, he pointed out, can exercise authority, and be an authority, without becoming authoritarian. Teachers have a responsibility to know their subject domains well. They need to prepare thoroughly for classes, provide an organizational structure for the courses they teach, and give some guidance on reading material. Teachers also need to know when to intervene in an educational dialogue in order to allow further productive dialogue to proceed (Freire & Shor, 1987 ). Teachers should alert students to competing perspectives in addressing complex topics, and they should always be open to having their own ideas challenged by the students with whom they work. This does not mean, when addressing contentious problems and issues, that teachers cannot hold a view themselves. What should be avoided, Freire maintains, is the imposition of the teacher’s view, or any other, as if there is only one legitimate position that can be adopted (Escobar et al., 1994 ; Freire & Faundez, 1989 ; Roberts, 1996c ).

For Freire, the idea of “neutral” education is an impossibility; teaching and learning are always ethical and political activities (Benade, 2012 ; Freire, 1985 , 1987 , 1998a , 1998c ; Giroux, 1983 , 2010 ; Horton & Freire, 1990 ; Mayo, 1997 , 1999 ; McLaren, 1999 ; Roberts, 2000 , 2010 ). This is so in multiple respects. At a global level, international organizations such as the OECD and ranking systems of the kind exhibited by the PISA process play an important role in shaping national educational agendas. Multinational corporations mold patterns of behavior and consumption that bear on everyday educational life (e.g., in the use of digital technologies, the Internet, and social media). Within individual countries, the political nature of education is evident in the laws that govern what can and cannot be done in institutions such as schools and universities, in the decisions made and actions taken by politicians, and in the policies that are produced.

Questions about what to include and exclude from the curriculum, what should be read, how students should be assessed, and how they should be taught are all political in nature. The physical environment of an educational setting can also have an important influence on what becomes possible in pedagogical terms. At an individual level, teachers and students will always bring with them a set of assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas about how the world is structured, what it means to be a human being, what we should strive to achieve, and so on, all of which will play a part in giving each educational setting its distinctive character. For Freire, education does not just have political “aspects”; it is a form of politics (Freire & Shor, 1987 ; Shor, 1993 ). Claims that education is or can be or should be “neutral” or “apolitical” are, he suggests, either naïve or disingenuous. Indeed, such claims often play a key political role in battles over curriculum content and pedagogical practice.

Freire’s work as an adult literacy educator played a pivotal role in shaping these ideas. When he was making his mark in this field in Brazil, the dominant pedagogical approach was banking education and the content that formed the heart of most literacy initiatives was largely disconnected from the everyday realities of the students. Freire offered an alternative way of thinking about literacy and the purpose of education. His starting point was to learn as much as he could about the lives of the adults who would be learning to read and write. From this initial research, a rich picture would be built up of family and working life for participating communities. Freire was interested not just in what people did to make their way in the world but how they did it and why. He wanted to know how people understood themselves and their relations with others. He listened to expressions of hope and despair, conveyed in distinctive ways by different participants.

With these key themes and features of daily life in mind, Freire and his coworkers developed a set of 15–18 generative words. The first word would always be trisyllabic. Thus, in an urban area, participants might begin with a word such as favela (slum) or tijolo (brick). By breaking the word down into its syllabic parts and recombining the consonant with other vowels, a host of new words could be generated: loja (store), juta (jute), and so on. Dialogue between participants on nature, culture, human relationships, reflection, and learning was encouraged. This element of the program was regarded as an integral part of the process of learning to read. The intent throughout was to maintain a close connection between “word” and “world,” enabling participants to not only acquire basic reading and writing skills at a rapid rate but also to deepen their understanding of the society in which they lived (see further, Bee, 1980 ; Freire, 1976 ; Lankshear, 1993 ; Roberts, 2000 ; Taylor, 1993 ). Freire was open about the politics involved in this process, noting that other approaches were similarly nonneutral, but paid a heavy price for this when the military swept to power in Brazil.

In later work, Freire continued to develop the idea of a critical integration of “word” with “world,” applying the principles that had underpinned his Brazilian and Chilean adult education initiatives to other contexts. In discussing university reading requirements, for example, he spoke of the importance of allowing a text to both challenge and be challenged. We should, with due humility and openness, be prepared not only to ask questions of what we are reading but also to allow the author’s ideas to question us. An author may prompt critical reflection by offering new ideas, or by disrupting our usual patterns of thought and categories for understanding. Freire’s position was one of “fighting” with a text while “loving” it (Freire & Shor, 1987 ). He encouraged readers to link the texts they engage with social, political, and cultural concerns in their own time and place. Freire acknowledged the importance of balancing breadth with depth in reading (Roberts, 2010 ). Breadth is necessary if we are to grasp how and where the ideas in one text might be placed in relation to a broader intellectual tradition. But depth is vital if we are to make the most of what a book can offer to us. Developing depth in reading can involve, among other things, processes of searching, reflecting, analyzing, discussing, comparing, and applying. In his teaching, Freire would sometimes spend several weeks on just a few pages of text, and in his own reading he would often become utterly immersed in a book for hours at a time (Freire, 1996 ; Freire & Shor, 1987 ).

From an early age, reading opened up new worlds for Freire, and the outdoor environment of his immediate childhood was, quite literally, his classroom. He learned to read under the shade of the mango tree at his home (Freire & Macedo, 1987 ). Freire supported the reading of works by a diverse range of authors, including many that would often be marginalized in university courses, but he also believed it was important for students to encounter the “classics” in their field. He speaks, for example, of the need to read Marx’s work, regardless of whether one accepts or rejects a Marxist theoretical framework (Freire & Shor, 1987 ). Well-written, rigorous scholarly texts offer an opportunity for dialogue, not just with those who study them in groups (e.g., in a university class), but, indirectly, between the reader and author of a work and with the others with whom one associates elsewhere in life. Texts should, Freire showed, live with us, informing the way we think about ourselves, the decisions we make, the way we interact with others, and the actions we take. Reading critically and well is demanding but rewarding. It is both a political process and an aesthetic experience and it plays an important role in our formation as ethical beings.

True to his own ideas, Freire remained a restless soul right up to the time of his death. As is clear from his later publications, Freire was, in particular, deeply troubled by the destructive impact of neoliberal policies in Brazil (Freire, 1994 , 1996 , 1997a , 1998a , 2004 , 2007 ). Neoliberalism, whatever form it takes in a given context, stands opposed to almost every aspect Freirean pedagogy. Neoliberals focus on individuals as self-interested, competitive, choosing consumers. Freire stresses that we are social beings. He argues against actions motivated purely by self-interest, and he is heavily critical of cultures of relentless consumption. He favors cooperation, communication, and collegiality over competitive individualism. Under neoliberalism, knowledge becomes a commodity, with the same properties as other goods and services in a market. Knowledge becomes important not for its own sake, or for the role it can play in addressing social injustices, but for its exchange value (Roberts & Peters, 2008 ). There is, from a neoliberal perspective, no need to distinguish between knowledge and skills or information. Indeed, for neoliberals, there is a separation of the “knower” from “knowledge”; the latter can exist without the presence of the former. For Freire, knowing is part of the wider process of humanization, and the idea of reducing knowledge to a figure that can be listed on a balance sheet is an absurdity.

In institutions governed by neoliberal principles, there is an obsession with measurement and performance. From a Freirean point of view, the very act of trying to measure everything is itself dehumanizing. Freire’s work shows that when we reflect deeply on what matters most in education, the language of measurement is unable to help us. How, Freire might have asked, can we “measure” love, care, courage, commitment, humility, and hope? Any attempt to do so diminishes the pedagogical possibilities in these terms and denies their philosophical complexity. Neoliberals support “free” trade, and education is expected to adhere to that principle; Freire would have wanted to have seen fair trade, ultimately under a different mode of production, with education playing a key role in preparing people to critically evaluate the structures that might facilitate or impede this. In a neoliberal world, economic goals dominate; for Freire, prosperity and individual or corporate advancement should be secondary to the cultivation of human virtues and the struggle to overcome oppression. In the West, neoliberalism has emerged as a form of late capitalism, interwoven with the broader process of globalization. Freire saw capitalism as intrinsically “evil” (Freire, 1998a ) and held on to a dream of democratic socialism that would render the world less discriminatory, exploitative, unequal, and unjust (Freire, 1993 , 1996 , 2007 ). Freire saw neoliberalism as a fatalistic discourse: a way of thinking that denied the possibility of alternatives to global capitalism and denuded education of its humanity and hope (Freire, 2004 ; Roberts, 2010 ). Through his writing, speaking and other activities, he fought hard to resist the tide of neoliberal reform, aware that this would be a long-term battle to which many would have to contribute.

Criticisms, Responses, and Possibilities

While acclaimed by many, Freire has also attracted his share of his criticism. Over the years, he responded to many of the key questions raised by others, while also leaving open a number of areas of inquiry for further investigation. In his dealings with critics, he worked hard to apply the principles he espoused in his writings. When faced with a view contrary to his own, he would try to avoid a defensive or reactionary posture and instead, in a spirit of equanimity, pay careful, respectful attention to what was being said. He reserved his sense of moral outrage and indignation (Freire, 2004 ) for the brutalities of neoliberalism. Regardless of the problem under investigation, he was committed to the ideals openness and humility, and he sought to learn more through engaging the critiques of others. At times, tensions emerged even with friends and colleagues (see, for example, Freire & Faundez, 1989 ) but these were for the most part productive in allowing Freire and his partners in dialogue to work through complex, contested ideas.

In the early years following his rise to international prominence, critics focused principally on Freire’s openly political approach to education, his style of writing, his manner of dealing with the process of class struggle, and his concept of conscientization (see further, Roberts, 2015 ). Freire’s response to the charge that he was making education political has already been signaled; he would draw attention to the ways in which it has always been thus, demonstrate the value of clarity and honesty in understanding and declaring one’s politics, and reinforce the importance of allowing and fostering alternative points of view. He would also show that commitment to a specific political goal or group or movement should never override the need for rigor and balance in the teaching of curriculum content (cf. Freire, 1987 ).

Freire’s style of writing also did not please all. Some saw the language employed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed as too abstract or too “revolutionary” in flavor. Freire was aware, however, that a degree of abstraction was necessary if he was to give complex philosophical ideas their due. The notion of seeing something as “revolutionary” in the content and style of Pedagogy of the Oppressed was consistent with Freire’s intentions (even if his concept of revolution might have differed from that embraced by some of his critics) and also reflected the contexts that had shaped the book. But Freire was also at pains to point out that he was not interested in a kind of sloganizing where rhetoric would stand in for sound argument and theoretical substance (cf. Freire, 1985 , 1994 , 1997a ; Freire & Faundez, 1989 ; Freire & Shor, 1987 ; Horton & Freire, 1990 ). Freire’s use of the male pronoun in his early works, with “he” standing in for “he or she,” was also criticized. This practice was common at the time, but Freire could see that it was problematic and, in the dialogical books of the late 1980s and throughout his writings in the 1990s, adopted more inclusive language (see further, Freire, 1997b ).

Frequent references to Marx and Marxists can be found in Freire’s earlier publications. Even so, Freire found himself under attack from some who saw his emphasis on dialogue and the virtues associated with it (love, care, tolerance, a willingness to listen, and so on) as naïve when dealing with the realities of class struggle (see Freire, 1985 ). Freire, while attentive to and respectful of these criticisms, was at the same time disturbed by any suggestion that a process of revolutionary change should, in the interests in overthrowing class oppression, ride roughshod over human communication and voices of difference.

A well-known early critique of conscientization was mounted by the sociologist Peter Berger ( 1974 ), who saw Freire’s depiction of different levels of consciousness as patronizing and paternalistic. Berger argues that Freire was committed to a process of “consciousness raising,” where an elite group of intellectuals would lift the oppressed masses from their ignorance. He claims that Freire’s approach to conscientization relies on the flawed idea that one person can be “more conscious” than another. The problem with Berger’s argument is that it attributes to Freire an understanding of consciousness, conscientization, and education that is inconsistent with the views conveyed in the Freirean texts available at that time. Freire supported the idea of people becoming more critically conscious, not “more conscious” in general. Freire’s early writings convey a much more nuanced, dynamic, dialectical view of consciousness than that implied by Berger’s account. The epistemology that underpins Freirean pedagogy is premised on the idea that no one is fully ignorant nor fully knowledgeable. Knowing is never complete and our consciousnesses are always changing as we interact with others and the world. Conscientization is better understood not as a matter of “consciousness raising” but as a continuous, subtle, ever shifting reflective process (Roberts, 1996a ). Others participate in shaping us as conscious beings, but no one can “raise” someone else’s consciousness as if mechanically lifting it up from one relatively fixed, stable state to another. Freire’s emphasis on the importance of humility, listening, and respect, his condemnation of the authoritarianism of banking education, and his support for dialogue as a fundamental pedagogical principle also do not square with Berger’s implied portrait of an arrogant, all-knowing group of educationists or intellectuals intent on converting others to their truth.

In some of the work Freire published following Berger’s critique, notably his book Pedagogy in Process (Freire, 1978 ), there are perhaps more serious grounds for concern. There, Freire leaves himself more exposed to charges of intellectual vanguardism (see Walker, 1980 ). He also adopts, from Amilcar Cabral, the highly problematic notion of “class suicide” (see Mayo, 1999 ). But the importance of contextualizing an author’s work must again be stressed. The substantive heart of Pedagogy in Process is a series of letters from Freire to influential figures in Guinea-Bissau in a situation of revolutionary change. It is true that Freire does seem to imply, in a number of publications, that there is a “correct” way of thinking. But when that language is examined in its appropriate contexts, it is clear that being “correct” in those cases means being critical (Roberts, 1999 ). Applying his own ideas on the impossibility of neutrality, Freire would be happy to admit that he does have a preferred ethical position and that he favors some modes of thinking and being over others. When invited to serve as a consultant in a country such as Guinea-Bissau, or to lead a literacy program in a country such as Brazil, he cannot begin from a “blank slate”; his work will be shaped and informed by his existing knowledge and experience, his hopes and dreams, his limitations. All organized forms of education, whether in kindergartens, schools, universities, or other contexts, involve intervention in the lives of others. But a crucial distinction can be drawn between intervention and imposition , and Freire’s opposition to the latter is clearly evident in his work (cf. Escobar et al., 1994 ; Freire, 1994 , 1997b , 1998a , 1998b , 1998c ; Freire & Shor, 1987 ; Roberts, 1996c , 1999 , 2010 ).

This point has particular relevance in responding to claims that Freire’s pedagogy, if applied in non-Western or traditional societies, would constitute an act of “cultural invasion” (Bowers, 1983 ). Freire had no intention of entering such contexts uninvited, let alone of imposing a narrow “Western mind-set” on the inhabitants of these societies. There is no one Western way of thinking or living or being, just as there is no single “Eastern” worldview, culture, or system of social organization. Freire accepted some ideas advanced by Western thinkers but rejected others. He valued dialogue and the posing of problems, for example, but rejected the ethos of individualism associated with some bodies of Western thought. He was not “against” tradition but rather sought to uphold what was best in both established cultural practices and new forms of social life (see further, Freire, 1976 ; Roberts, 1996c , 2003 , 2015 ).

Questions have also been raised about the concept of love advanced by Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a ). Nel Noddings ( 1991 ), for example, problematizes Freire’s account of the different roles played by oppressors and the oppressed in the process of liberation. She notes that Freire sees a certain power in the weakness of the oppressed, and that he believes the oppressed must, through an act of love, liberate both themselves and their oppressors. Noddings asks: “What in the history or the experience of the oppressed leads us to suppose that they will be loving? Or is liberation an act of love simply by virtue of its result?” (p. 161). In response to Freire’s urging of oppressors to take a radical stance and join with the oppressed in solidarity, she says: “[C]learly the oppressor can only approximate this solidarity. The oppressor will of necessity have a different consciousness from the oppressed and different instruments to express outrage” (p. 161). Freire’s call for an “act of love” instead of “pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures” on the part of the oppressor (cited in Noddings, 1991 , p. 162) leaves Noddings dissatisfied: “A full description of this ‘act of love’ is not forthcoming, nor does Freire justify his belief that men can or will produce such acts” (Noddings, 1991 , p. 162). A danger in rejecting “individualistic gestures,” as Noddings sees it, is that the oppressed will be reduced to an abstract category. “[B]y failing to treat in any depth the whole range of loving human activity,” Noddings argues, Freire “risks the success of his project” (p. 163).

This line of argument is connected with a broader concern expressed by some theorists about Freire’s approach to questions of difference. Weiler ( 1991 ), for instance, argues that Freire does not pay adequate attention to the multiple layers, tensions, and contradictions that characterize relations of oppression and liberation. Freire, it is said, relies on a universalist account of oppression, with a binary opposition between “oppressors” and “oppressed.” This ignores the fact that a man may, for example, be oppressed by a landowner or a capitalist but also be an oppressor in the way he treats his wife and children. When such criticisms were raised with Freire, he accepted that he may have said less about oppression along ethnic and gender lines, while explaining that his principal focus was class oppression (cf. Freire, 1997b ; Freire & Macedo, 1993 ). Where Freire did comment on matters of gender, he sometimes did himself no favors, and this remains a weakness in his work (cf. Mayo, 1999 ; Jackson, 2007 ). While Freire himself said relatively little about questions of ethnicity, race, and indigenous education, other scholars have found much of value in his work in addressing these areas (see, for example, hooks, 1993 ; Murrell, 1997 ; Smith, 1999 ).

Noddings is right that in Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Freire’s account of love leaves some unanswered questions. But Freire urged his critics to read beyond Pedagogy of the Oppressed , and to recognize that his ideas had evolved and developed over time. In later books, he spoke at some length about love from an ethical, political, and educational point of view. He reinforced his abhorrence of sexism and racism—indeed, all forms of discrimination (see Freire, 1993 )—but also noted that people were not just characterized by their differences. He argued for a position of unity in and through diversity (see Freire, 1996 , 1997a , 1997b , 1998a ), primarily on ethical grounds but also for pragmatic reasons. He was aware that while differences often exist among those on the political Right (e.g., between economic liberals and moral conservatives), such groups would often forge a strategic unity when facing opposition from the Left. Achieving this kind of unity would sometimes prove difficult if not impossible for those on the Left, who would be unable to work productively with their differences and would (figuratively speaking) tear themselves apart through theoretical infighting.

Freire felt that differences should become not antagonistic to dialogue but essential for its existence. For without something to provide contrast or tension there is no movement in an educational conversation. It is not a matter of “overcoming” differences but rather of working constructively with them (cf. Rozas Gomez, 2007 ). The very existence of complexity, tension, and conflict between groups in educational situations can itself become an object of critical inquiry. This is not to deny imbalances in the way power can be exercised in given situations. To the contrary, Freire maintained: relations of power (including those between teachers and students) must be confronted and addressed. But this, for Freire, does not mean dialogue between individuals and groups who differ along class, gender, ethnicity, and other lines is impossible (cf. Ellsworth, 1989 ). Just as no group gathered for an educational purpose (or for any other reason) can be without differences, so too will there never be a situation where those present have nothing in common. Quite apart from any specific features that bind a group together (e.g., all being committed to learning in a particular subject domain, or all having been present during a significant event, or all feeling dissatisfied in some way with their work), there is, from a Freirean perspective, something that unites us all as human beings: our vocation of humanization—our universal human ethic, as Freire referred to it in his later work (Freire, 1998a ).

Freire’s appeal to a position of unity in diversity remained an inadequate response from the point of view of many of his critics. Indeed, the term “diversity” might be seen by some as indicative of the shortcomings in his approach. “Diversity” is not the same as “difference.” Many who had serious misgivings about Freire’s work on oppression and liberation drew on postmodern, poststructuralist, and postcolonial currents of thought. In his later books Freire does refer to postmodernism, speaking of it as an attitude of openness and linking it with his idea of not becoming too certain of one’s certainties (see Freire, 1994 ; Peters, 1999 ). He aligns himself with “progressive” postmodernism, emphasizing the importance of remaining committed to the process of political struggle and social transformation, whatever our differences, in the face of the enormous challenges posed by neoliberal policies and practices. But he did not address questions of postmodernism and postmodernity in a detailed way.

There are other bodies of work that could have been helpful in fleshing out some key elements of his pedagogical theory. Freire speaks frequently of the importance of feelings, as well as reason, in our educational development, and the theme of care is clearly important in his approach to teaching. Drawing more overtly on scholarship in the philosophy of emotion and the ethics of care could have enhanced these aspects of his work (see further, Roberts, 2010 ). Freire has a great deal to say about epistemological, ethical, and educational virtues, but there is little direct engagement with the wider philosophical literature in this area (e.g., virtue ethics). Freire also said little about the world ecological crisis that emerged as a problem of great significance in the last quarter of the 20th century , though he was, it seems, beginning to write in this area near the end of his life (Schugurensky, 2011 ).

Paulo Freire was a thinker who invited ongoing reflection and critical engagement from his readers. He actively encouraged educators to “reinvent” his work in their own contexts. He should not been seen as an educational “guru” or “hero” with “followers” or “disciples,” and attempts to construe Freire and/or those who engage his work in this way often say more about those applying such labels than those to whom they are applied. Freire’s work has weaknesses and omissions, as is true, of course, of all significant figures in the history of educational thought. In the last decade of his life Freire was, in some respects, too productive, and the publication of fewer books, with more time to refine his ideas and to comment on the work of other scholars, might have addressed some of the shortcomings that remain in his educational theory (Roberts, 2015 ). He was, in keeping with his own understanding of humanization, an “unfinished” writer, and there is considerable scope for further inquiry in building on the openings he provides.

Putting his ideas into conversation with other thinkers, East and West, is one way of pursuing this agenda. Among the many thinkers, teachers, activists, and writers with whom he has been compared are Lao Tzu, Confucius, Plato, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Maria Montessori, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, John Dewey, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Mikhail Bakhtin, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Simone Weil, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Che Guevara, Lorenzo Milani, Julius Nyerere, Jurgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Ivan Illich, Maxine Greene, Nel Noddings, bell hooks, and Jacques Ranciere. This is by no means an exhaustive list. (Many of the names that appear here have been drawn from Schugurensky, 2011 , pp. 188–191. See also Mayo, 1999 ; McLaren, 2000 ; Morrow & Torres, 2002 ; Roberts, 2010 , 2012 , 2016 ; Shim, 2007 .) Such analyses often focus as much on differences as similarities, but the range of people invoked in these comparisons is itself significant and indicative of the reflection prompted by Freire’s work. Critical comparative scholarship need not be limited to those who publish nonfictional texts. A Freirean framework can, for example, lend itself well to an educational reading of novels and short stories, and productive connections can be made between Freire and literary figures such as Mary Shelley, Hermann Hesse, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among many others (Roberts, 2010 ; Rozas Gomez, 2015 ).

Neoliberal ideas, policies, and practices continue to evolve, and the concerns Freire raised in the last few years of his life (Freire, 1994 , 1997a , 1998a , 2004 , 2007 ) provide starting points for other scholars in addressing the problems posed by these developments. Several aspects of Freire’s ontology, epistemology, and ethic are worthy of further reflection, including his concept of the human subject, his notion of knowing as a holistic process (involving the body, mind, and feelings), his approach to the pragmatics of political change, his theory of social class, and the nature and significance of key virtues in the process of liberation. Educators in a variety of pedagogical settings can build upon, critique, and apply ideas from Freire on the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students (see Peters & Besley, 2015 ). Freire’s link between “word” and “world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987 ) has much to offer in theorizing literacy practices in a range of contemporary contexts. His comments on higher education (in Escobar et al., 1994 , and elsewhere) have ongoing relevance for debates over university goals and priorities.

Paulo Freire has left an indelible mark on the theory and practice of education over the last half century, and it seems likely that his work will continue to generate wide-ranging interest, inquiry, and debate in the decades that lie ahead of us. Freire was deeply committed to education and social justice in his homeland of Brazil, but he was also a pedagogue who, in a certain sense, transcended national boundaries. In the years following the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed , he became one of the best known and most influential educationists in the world. His legacy lies not just in the books he published but also in the actions he took as a teacher, the decisions he made as an administrator, the feelings he expressed in his relationships with others, and the intellectual problems he posed for himself and others. When Freire’s contributions are examined holistically, it is clear that his espousing of a “universal human ethic” did not prevent him from paying close attention to particulars. The myriad small moments of love, joy, anger, curiosity, pain, and persistence mattered greatly to Freire. He relished life in all its fullness and tried to encourage others to do likewise. Taking up this invitation, in whatever ways are appropriate for different groups, in specific contexts and at given times, is a task many educationists will embrace enthusiastically.

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An exploration of problem posing-based activities as an assessment tool and as an instructional strategy

Shitanshu Mishra 1 &
Sridhar Iyer 2

Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning volume 10 , Article number: 5 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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Problem posing, the generation of questions by learners, has been shown to be an effective instructional strategy for teaching–learning of complex materials in domains such as mathematics. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential of problem posing in two dimensions. Firstly, we present how problem posing can result in unfolding of knowledge and hence how it can be used as an instructional strategy. Then we present another problem posing-based activity as an assessment tool in an Introductory Programming course (CS1).

To explore the potential of problem posing as an instructional strategy, we conducted field studies in the two CS application courses (Data Structures (DS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)), in which we provided a semi-structured problem posing situation to students. We performed inductive qualitative research and development the questions generated by students using grounded theory-based qualitative data analysis technique. To explore the potential of problem posing as an assessment tool, we conducted a field study in CS1 wherein we employed another problem posing (PP)-based activity in a large class for assessing the learning of computational thinking concepts in an introductory programming course and analysed how performance in traditional assessment tools (quiz score) is related with performance in our non-traditional assessment tool (quality of problems posed during a problem posing activity).

From the studies in DS and AI courses we found that students pose questions and unfold knowledge using seven strategies — Apply, Organize, Probe, Compare, Connect, Vary, and Implement. From the field study performed in the CS1 course we found that the quality of the problems posed (difficulty level) were mostly aligned to the traditional assessment results in the case of novice learners but not in the case of advanced learners.

Problem posing (PP) refers to the generation of a new problem or a question by learners based on the given situation (Mishra and Iyer 2013 ). PP has been shown to be useful for identifying knowledge deficit, and opens a way to knowledge exploration. Stoyanova & Ellerton ( 1996 ) describe three problem posing situations: free situation, structured situation, and semi-structured situation. Different situations result in the different quality of questions. Variations on these situations can be used to design various PP based activities for different purposes. In this paper we have explored the potential of PP in two dimensions, viz., PP as an instructional strategy, and PP as an assessment tool.

In the first part of this paper, we describe a PP based instructional strategy and report its effect on students’ exploration based learning. We find that the PP based instructional strategy proposed in this research is a way to enable exploration based learning, where students unfold knowledge and explore the course content by posing problems. This exploration based learning inculcates a feeling of ownership of the learning process in the students. The students’ open feedback show that students enjoyed the PP based instruction more than the traditional instructions.

In the second part we describe a field study conducted in CS1 course to explore the assessment potential of PP. We found that students were able to demonstrate their learning through question generation and PP can be used as an assessment tool. We find that all possible computational thinking concepts (Brennan and Resnick 2012 ) were demonstrated by students generated questions. We also find that different qualitative aspects of the questions help in determining different set of assessment objectives.

In the next section we present motivation and a summary of related studies in the domain of problem posing. Further two sections detail the two explorations, i.e., exploring the potential of PP as an instructional Strategy and as an assessment tool respectively. The last section contains the discussion and conclusion of this research.

Motivation and related study

In this section, we report the related research showing how PP has been explored by education researchers.

Problem posing education is a term coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Freire defines this term as a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation (Wallerstein 1987 ). Freire used a problem posing educational model as an alternative to traditional instructionist approach. Human problem posing is extremely limited in both quantity and quality (Graesser et al. 2008 ). Except for few skilled learners, most human learners lack the essential skill of intelligent inquiry that they can use to enhance their learning. There are very few people who know their knowledge deficit (Hacker et al. 1998 ). Most people pose very few and shallow problems (Dillon 1990 ; Good et al. 1987 ; Graesser and Person 1994 ).

“A typical student in a class asks less than 0.2 questions per hour in a classroom and the poverty of classroom questions is a general phenomenon across cultures” (Graesser and Person 1994 ). In addition to the quantity of questions that learners/tutors ask, the quality of questions posed also affects learning (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1992 ; Graesser et al. 2005 ; Vanderwende 2008 ). As compared to deep questions (for example why, why not, how, what-if, what-if-not), shallow questions (who, what, when, where) are asked more by learners and teachers. Generation of both shallow- and deep-level questions is highly important in any teaching–learning environment. Researchers in cognitive science and education recommend teaching–learning environments that encourage students to pose more and good quality questions (Graesser et al. 2008 ; Beck 1997 ; Edelson et al. 1999 ). Explicit training for PP is essential for students and even for instructors.

Limitations in problem posing capability are found in other situations, such as teachers in classrooms asking shallow questions over 90 % of the time (Dillon 1990 ) and tutors find it difficult to generate good hints and prompts to get students engaged in productive learning trajectories (Chi et al. 2001 ; Corbett and Mostow 2008 ; DiPaolo et al. 2004 ). Tutors also need to pose good questions to assess how well the students learned and to troubleshoot specific deficits in knowledge and skill (Corbett and Mostow 2008 ) and questions on exams need to be tailored for deeper learning and more discriminating assessments of learning (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1992 ; Corbett and Mostow 2008 ; Leacock and Chodorow 2003 ). More interestingly, problem posing always precedes problem solving and is an important micro-activity that is needed for problem solving (Pintér 2012 ).

Related work

PP has been explored by researchers in a number of domains, and dimensions. In Table 1 , we present a range of research work which we found during our literature survey.

The literature survey shows that problem posing has been used as an instructional strategy mostly in the domains of mathematics and prose comprehension. Research in other domains is limited, particularly to physics education, nursing education, and biochemistry. To the best of our knowledge, there is a dearth of research that explores PP as an instructional strategy for teaching–learning of computer science or teaching–learning of engineering domain as a whole. Moreover, no significant research has been found, which talks about student PP skill as an object of instruction. One of the few research that has been found in this direction is about training pre-service teachers on effective question posing. Graesser and Person ( 1994 ), Akay and Boz ( 2009 ), Lavy and Shriki ( 2010 ), and Lavy and Bershadsky ( 2003 ) show how some instructions on PP can improve PP skill for some specific type of problems. McComas and Abraham ( 2004 ) and Profetto-McGrath et al. ( 2004 ) specifically establish need for effective teaching–learning strategies for developing PP skills. Gubareva ( 1992 ) talked about how could PP be used in building PP skills in the biochemistry domain. English ( 1998 ) and Lavy and Bershadsky ( 2003 ) show how some instructions on PP can improve PP skill for some specific type of problems. Beal and Cohen ( 2012 ) have demonstrated that mathematics PP skill was improved when the activity was carried out over an online collaborative learning environment.

Mestre ( 2002 ), Cai et al. ( 2013 ), and Arikan et al. ( 2012 ) employ PP as an assessment tool. Toluk-Uçar ( 2009 ), Lavy and Shriki ( 2010 ), Silver ( 1997 ), Cankoy and Darbaz ( 2010 ), Gubareva ( 1992 ), English ( 1998 ), and Pintér ( 2012 ) demonstrate how PP can be used as an instructional strategy. Çildir and Sezen ( 2011 ) and Silver et al. ( 1996 ) talk about the relation between problem posing and problem solving. As far as our exploration of PP as an instructional strategy is concerned, the notion of PP that we are interested in is PP involving the generation of new questions around a given situation, wherein students use the PP activity as a way to unfold new knowledge, around conceptually related seed knowledge, in any given domain. We want that the PP situation should not restrict the posed questions around a specific problem solving task, as in Dillon ( 1982 ). However, we want that the PP situation should enable the generation of questions around the scope of a course, and/or a domain. This PP situation is described as a semi-structured PP situation, as opposed to the free and ill-structured PP situations (Stoyanova and Ellerton, 1996 ). The semi-structured PP situation enables divergent thinking and is driven by students’ intrinsic motivation and therefore positively affects problem posing (Lee and Cho 2007 ). To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing research that aims at exploring PP as an instructional strategy with this notion in computer science education research.

Problem posing as an instructional strategy

Literature suggests that PP involves student in the transformation of knowledge and understanding, engages them in constructing knowledge through various processes, and enables them to generate new knowledge through self-exploration (Ghasempour et al. 2013 ; Beal and Cohen 2012 ). The PP activities foster a sense of ownership of learning in students by engaging them in metacognitive strategies (Ghasempour et al. 2013 ). This motivated us to explore PP as a technique through which students can self-direct their learning.

Designing the PP-based instructional strategy

We employed Design and Development Research (Richey 2014 ) to develop a QP-based teaching–learning (T-L) strategy to enable student directed learning in classroom settings. Three cycles of Design and Development Research (DDR) has been employed to come up with the current version of the strategy. The developed T-L strategy is known as Student Query Directed Learning (SQDL). The three cycles of DDR are described as follows:

The first DDR cycle

The objective of the first DDR cycle was to come up with a preliminary design of SQDL (Fig. 1a ) and investigate if a PP-based activity could be administered with the following constraints: (i) Questions are posed by all students either to address their knowledge deficit, or to construct new knowledge. (ii) Generated questions are reviewed among peers to reduce redundant questions. We started with a straight forward PP-based activity in classroom, where a teacher delivers a small instruction, students write questions during and after the instruction. Students share the questions with each other and return the question slips after removing the repeated questions. After collecting the questions, the teacher answers all the clarification (muddy point) questions and then addresses all the exploratory questions. The first version of the SQDL strategy that satisfies these requirements is comprised of the following three phases of activities:

a SQDL version 1—the preliminary version. b SQDL version 3—the final version

Phase 1—initial instruction phase : The initial instruction phase was used as a semi-structured PP situation (Stoyanova and Ellerton 1996 ), which was characterized by an initial instruction (seed) by the teacher. The contents of the initial instruction comprise fundamental sub-topics which are essential for the exploration of the complete topic(s). In this paper, we refer to the contents of the initial instruction as “Seed knowledge” or “Seed”. Moreover, this initial instruction explicitly has hints or components, which can encourage exploratory questions among students. The initial instruction was light (less in content), and short (of short time), to ensure that students assimilate (Mayer and Moreno 2003 ) most of its contents. Students were free to take notes or write questions simultaneously along with attending to the instruction.

Phase 2—problem posing phase : In the second phase, students are asked to pose questions around the content they study in the seed. Students are explicitly told that they can generate questions for two purposes—(a) when they want to clarify any muddy point related to the seed or any previous lecture, and (b) when they want to discover more knowledge related to or based on the contents of the seed instruction. We call this activity of question posing as “ think ” sub-phase.

After each student has finished posing questions, they are asked to share their questions among each other (“ Share ” sub-phase). Students are asked to review others’ questions and ensure that the question is not a repetition of their own question. Two students with similar questions were required to disambiguate the question set by removing one of the two similar questions. Students are not asked to discuss the answers with each other, as this would consume enormous amount of time.

Phase 3—addressal phase (instruction next) : All the generated questions are collected, and the teacher answered each question one by one. While answering, the teacher is asked to answer “clarification” type questions first (“ Clarify ” sub-phase) and then answer “exploratory” type questions (“ Explore ” sub-phase). By “clarification questions,” we refer to all the questions which require reiteration of the content that has been explicitly been taught in the seed or in any other previous lectures in the course. By “exploratory questions,” we refer to the questions which lead to unfolding or construction of new knowledge. Clarification questions are addressed first because they could be the bottle-neck and pre-requisite for understanding the discussions about exploratory questions. During the “ clarify” and “ explore” sub-phases, the instructor has the liberty not to answer irrelevant and out-of-scope questions.

We did a field study based on this preliminary design in an artificial intelligence (AI) course, and identified the required modifications in the strategy, which led to the revised design of the second DDR cycle.

The second DDR cycle

Taking inputs from the implementation of the preliminary strategy, we modified the strategy by adding a small activity of “ summarization ” under phase 3. During the “summarization” sub-phase, the teacher summarizes and organizes all the concepts discussed during the “explore” and “clarify” sub-phases. The summarization is essential in order to enable students to make connections between the concepts discussed for a better learning (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988 ). We implemented the modified SQDL in a data structures (DS) class. The observations from this implementation suggested further modifications in the SQDL strategy.

The third DDR cycle

The modification done in the SQDL strategy for the third DDR cycle was that an activity of tagging was added to phase 2 (Fig. 1b ), i.e., after posing their own questions (“think” sub-phase) and while reviewing others’ questions (“share” sub-phase), students are asked to tag the questions as “low”, “medium”, and “high” according to their perception of the importance of the questions. This ensured that the sharing activity is not merely a way to avoid the redundant questions, but it made students review the questions even deeper. This modification was in line with the requirement of constructionist learning (Papert 1993 ), which advocates that learning occurs “especially well when the learner is engaged in constructing something for others to see” (Papert 1993 , Patten et al. 2006 ). In the third (and current) version of the SQDL strategy, it is ensured that students construct new knowledge through question posing, and at the same time, they know that their generated question will be reviewed by others and the answer to the questions will be addressed to or discussed with the whole class.

The field study (field study 1) for the first DDR cycle was executed in artificial intelligence (AI) course, whereas the field studies (field studies 2 and 3, respectively) for the second and the third DDR cycles were administered in data structures classes. There were several types of data collected in each field study, but in this paper, the only data that we discuss is the questions generated by students during problem posing phases of field study 1 and field study 2, as the research focused on how much exploration-based learning took place.

In the next sections, we discuss the final version of SQDL and the results obtained from the qualitative analysis of the questions.

Defining SQDL—the final version

We define SQDL as a question posing-based teaching–learning strategy that enables students to regulate their learning by posing questions. Students’ pose questions based on the contents of an initial lecture (“Seed”) and determine which content/sub-topics that are conceptually related to the seed have to be taught next. After the last DDR cycle in the current version of SQDL, a single iteration of SQDL consists of three phases: (1) Initial Instruction Phase , (2) PP Phase , (3) Addressal (or next instruction) phase . Phase 2 is comprised of two sub-phases: (2.1) Think and Tag , (2.2) Share and tag. The third phase is comprised of three sub-phases: (3.1) Clarify , (3.2) Explore , (3.3) Summarize .

Research methodology

In this sub-section we discuss the two implementations of SQDL (field study 1 and field study 2). We delimit our discussion to the collection and analysis of posed questions, with an objective of investigating how much exploration-based learning took place.

Implementations (the PP sessions and data collection)

Artificial intelligence sessions (field study 1):.

We administered two PP sessions in a seventh semester engineering classroom of 35 students in an AI course. The first phase or the seed instruction phase was of 15 min. The topic covered in the seed lecture of the first AI session was “Comparison of Attributes of Intelligence in Utility based, Goal Based, and Simple Reflex agents”. The learning objective for the first session of the seed instruction was “By the end of the seed instruction student should be able to identify differences between simple-reflex, goal-based, and utility-based agents, with respect to the level and attributes of intelligence”.

The topic covered in the seed lecture of the second AI session was “The architecture of learning agents”. Learning objective for this session of the seed instruction was “By the end of the seed instruction student should be able to identify the attributes of intelligence present in the learning agents”. The PP phases in the both sessions continued for 10 min. Students wrote their questions on paper slips and submitted to the TAs. Students were explicitly told about the types (clarification and exploratory) of questions that they could prefer to generate. We collected 25 distinct questions in the first session and 23 distinct questions in the second session.

At the end of the AI session, students were asked to write down their feedback to the open-ended question, “How was today’s lecture different, good, and bad from other traditional lectures?” We received responses from 39 students.

Data structure session (field study 2):

Similar to the AI session, we administered a PP session in a 4th semester engineering classroom of 60 students in a DS classroom. The instruction phase was executed for 15 min. Topics covered in the seed lecture were “Node Structure” and “Linking two nodes”. The learning objective of the seed instruction was “By the end of the seed instruction, student should be able to define, declare, construct, and access their own nodes and linkages between nodes using Java.” The PP phase continued for 10–15 min. Students were told to write their questions on paper slips, review the questions from their peers to remove the redundant questions, and submit the final question slips to the TAs. After discarding the irrelevant and remaining redundant questions, we were left with a corpus of 56 distinct questions.

Data analysis

Grounded theory-based qualitative analysis:.

We have collected a total of 104 student questions from the two PP sessions. We first conducted an in-depth study of these question statements to find out what strategies students use to pose questions in the given semi-structured PP situation. We employed a grounded theory-based inductive qualitative research methodology. After the completion of the analysis, we found the answer to the more refined research question, “How do students use their prior knowledge/experience, and the knowledge from “seed” to generate a new question?” In this paper, we are not reporting the detailed analysis procedures and output, as it has been communicated for publication elsewhere. The result of the analysis was eight PP strategies that explain how students used prior, and the seed knowledge to come up with new questions.

Content analysis:

We further qualitatively analyzed each question to extract the knowledge type of the prior knowledge used to generate the question, knowledge type of the unfolded knowledge for any question, concept (topic/sub-topic) unfolded by any question.

In this paper, we present a descriptive analysis of different PP strategies evident for the question set, the knowledge types of the information requested by the question set, and the amount of knowledge unfolded using PP. The next section contains the analysis results of the study.

Open-ended feedback from students:

To analyze the open-ended responses from all students, we performed a content analysis of the text obtained from their feedback notes. We coded each response to answer three questions: (1) What are the advantages of the PP-based SQDL activity? (2) What are the disadvantages of the activity? (3) Reason behind advantage and/or disadvantages?

Results (PP as an instructional strategy)

Pp strategies.

PP strategies emerged out of grounded theory-based inductive qualitative analysis of 104 questions are described in Table 2 . It should be noted that for a complete inductive model, further work, with more data, is needed, and therefore, the evolved strategies may be further refined in future research. We have used the Bloom’s 2-D taxonomy of knowledge type (Anderson et al. 2001 ) and identified different types of knowledge that students unfold. An account of type of knowledge unfolded in all the seven sub-strategies are given in Table 3 . In this case, the frequencies do not sum to 1 because there were few questions which fell in more than one strategy. We see that out of four knowledge types defined in the Bloom’s 2-D taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001 ), metacognitive knowledge type could not be unfolded. We also see that except ‘ Clarify’ , all other seven strategies lead to knowledge unfolding. We are not reporting the analysis procedure, as it has been communicated for publication elsewhere.

Knowledge unfolded

We found a range of topics/sub-topics from the traditional syllabus has been unfolded by the PP activities. The concept map of the concepts unfolded in the DS session is shown in Fig. 2 . The concept map was created in consultation with the course instructor. The nodes in the concept map are the different concepts requested by the generated question.

Concepts unfolded in data structures PP session

The grey nodes represent the concepts which were taught in the instruction phase (i.e., seed concepts), while the red border around a node denotes that there were some clarification questions generated related to that particular concept. The green nodes show the concepts which were unfolded, i.e., they were not taught to students before. The green node with a dotted border is an unfolded concept which is out of the scope of traditional DS syllabus. The concepts denoted by the yellow nodes are the prior knowledge within the domain which was used during PP.

Student’s open-ended feedback

We found that all of the 39 responses suggest that the activity was helpful in learning and creating interest. Students predominantly perceived that the activity was helpful to learning due to the following reasons: (a) The activity helped them to clarify their muddy points and learning basic details. (b) Due to the activity, students came across critical questions. (c) The activity covers all necessary topics. (d) It was better to explore topics more from students point of view. (e) It removed fear and hesitation of participating in the class, and increased active learning. The disadvantage of the activity as perceived by the students was that the activity was very much time-consuming. It would be interesting to study in our future research how much time does the traditional lecture require as compared to the time required by the SQDL approach to cover the same set of topics.

Problem posing as an assessment tool

We conducted an in situ field study in the CS101 course. The main objective of the study was to investigate the effect of a 2-week scratch intervention on students’ learning and transitioning to C++. We aided the study with a PP-based nontraditional assessment tool. We designed a PP-based assessment activity, to investigate the learning of computational thinking concepts of introductory programming. The research questions that this study answered were:

RQ1: How can student-generated questions be used to assess the learning of Computer Programming concepts? RQ2: How does the quality of question(s) generated by a student relate to the score achieved by him/her in the traditional assessment?

The PP situation of this activity was completely different than that described in the “ Problem posing as an instructional strategy ” section. Here the “Seed” knowledge was considered to be the 4-week-long (total 12 h) instruction. Moreover, the purpose of this PP activity was to generate questions to assess other students, whereas the purpose of question posing in the SQDL (“ Problem posing as an instructional strategy ” section) was to clarify or explore knowledge to improve learning.

The PP activity implementation

After teaching CS1 for 4 weeks using Scratch and C++ as the programming languages, we conducted a traditional assessment in the form of a quiz. In the fifth week, during the lab sessions, each student was asked to generate two practice questions for the coming mid-term exam on which other students could work (Fig. 3 ). Since PP was a novel activity for students, this novelty could have obstructed smooth responses from students. Literature (Williams et al. 2000; McDowell et al. 2002 ) suggests that collaboration is an effective pedagogical tool for teaching introductory programming. In the case of learning through pair programming, students produced better programs and completed the course at higher rates. This motivated us to make students to generate programming questions in pair. Therefore, we implemented a “collaborative” PP activity in which two students collaborated as a team to generate questions. Each pair was asked to generate two questions pertaining to the topics covered so far. They were free to set either a programming question or a conceptual question and had to submit detailed answers to their generated questions. Students were given motivation that the 18 best questions from each lab-batch would be selected as the practice questions for the next lab-batch, and questions could be selected for the mid-semester question paper. Students were given only one open-ended guideline “The questions should be challenging but should not be too difficult for the students in the next batch to complete in the lab”. The time given to generate two questions was 45 min, but for many students, the time was extended up to an hour. Students submitted their generated questions over Moodle (Dougiamas and Taylor 2003 ), the learning management system used in the course.

Implementation of PP as an assessment tool

A team of TAs was assigned to talk to students and motivate them to brainstorm and generate questions that may lead to deeper application of the concepts taught in the class. There were 90 students per lab session, and there was one TA per 10 students. TAs were told to intervene whenever they found any student stuck in the activity, or sitting idle for long time, or busy doing some out-of-context work. It was the responsibility of a senior TA to coordinate with junior TAs to manage all the logistics in the lab session.

The generated questions were analyzed qualitatively to answer our research questions. We analyzed the questions based on five different qualitative analysis themes, viz., creativity of the problem poser, difficulty of the problem, cognitive level of the problem, problem type, programming concepts (Table 4 ).

We designed qualitative rubrics to define different levels of creativity and difficulty of generated problems. This rubric (given in Table 5 ) was prepared in consultation with three Educational Technology researchers who had at least 17 years of experience in computer programming. To analyze which programming concept is targeted by any problem, we used the list of Computational Thinking Concepts (CTCs) given by Brennan and Resnick ( 2012 ). We found that each question contained one or more CTCs. Cognitive levels of the problems were assigned as per revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson et al 2001 ), and we also analyzed whether the problem type is of write a program, debugging, predict the output, or theoretical (subjective).

To answer RQ2, we operationalized the quality of questions using difficulty levels of the questions. Then we explicated the pattern between the difficulty level and the stratified (low, medium, high) scores of the fourth week quiz using stratified attribute tracking diagrams (Majumdar and Iyer 2014 ).

Learning of programming concepts

We find that Operator, Data, and Sequences were the prominent CTCs targeted by most of the generated questions, while almost 70 % of the generated questions requested the knowledge of loops (Table 6 ).

Quality of questions (difficulty levels and creativity)

Frequency distributions of questions with different difficulty and creativity levels are shown in Tables 7 and 8 , respectively. It should be noted that these frequency distributions tell us about the performance of the class as a whole and not the individual students.

Relation between the traditional assessment score and nontraditional assessment tools

Figure 4a, b shows the transition patterns of performance of students in traditional vs nontraditional assessments. Figure 4a shows the pattern for advance learners, and Fig. 4b shows pattern for novices.

a Advanced learners. b Novice learners

We see that for novices, the higher the score in the quiz, the lesser is the probability of generating a low difficulty question. Probability of generating medium-level difficulty questions by both high- and medium-level quiz performers is evident in both novice and advance cases. Interestingly, high probability of generating low difficulty questions by high pretest performers is evident in the case of advance learners only, this shows that the difficulty level can be used to assess the learning of novices, but not advanced learners.

Discussion and conclusion

We designed two kinds of PP activities with two different PP situations. The nature of PP situations varied depending on the purpose of PP. The first PP situation aimed at exploring the potential of problem posing as a tool to facilitate exploration-based learning. We had employed DDR and developed SQDL as a PP-based instructional strategy. We implemented SQDL in AI and DS classes, and collected the questions posed by students during the SQDL sessions. The inductive qualitative analysis of the posed questions revealed eight different strategies by which students use the seed knowledge and their prior knowledge to generate new questions. Out of the eight strategies, seven strategies lead to knowledge unfolding and one of them leads to clarification of muddy points. It should be noted that future research may lead to further refinement of these eight strategies. When we analyzed the questions for different contents (topics/sub-topics) that they request and hence unfold, we found that students were able to unfold a large number of topics in a single iteration of SQDL. The benefits of PP activity are found to be twofold: (a) potential of addressing muddy points through the generation of clarification questions and (b) knowledge unfolding capability through generation of exploratory questions. As far as the extent of knowledge unfolding is concerned, it was evident that there were large numbers of concepts unfolded during SQDL sessions; still there is no metric to determine what should be called as “adequate” or “acceptable” coverage. This could be an interesting future research objective. The responses of the students to the open-ended feedback question “How was today’s activity helpful?” in the class confirm the above. Some of the responses are given below:

“…Helpful for doubts”

“…Innovative way of learning…. doubts without being scared”,

“Through today’s activity… I can explore more… can

“find new ideas how far we can go with the subject”,

“…Good way of getting knowledge…”

“It helped in explore topics more from student point of view and hence improved learning…”

SQDL is helpful in student-driven unfolding of course contents which are conceptually related to the seed instruction. However, we do not expect students to ask questions and unfold topics which are conceptually unrelated to the seed concepts. Therefore, in addition to AI and DS, SQDL is suitable for all domains which has a large number of conceptually related topics. The types and distribution PP strategies employed may vary according to the nature of different domains. We believe that there exists potentially interesting research objective to investigate the variations in nature of questions posed across different domains.

The second PP situation (PPE activity) was designed to explore the potential of problem posing as an assessment tool. We found that PP can be used to assess the learning of computational thinking concepts by students in the CS1 course. In the PPE activity, students generate questions and they also provide solutions/answers to them. This ensures that the concepts which are required to answer a question are understood by the students. We aggregated all these concepts that emerged from the generated questions and determined the frequency distribution of various concepts learned by the students. It should be noted that we did not assess the learning of any individual student on the topics around which (s)he has not generated questions. Though, PPE can be used to assess the learning of different concepts by the class, as a whole. We also attempted to study the relation of “understanding of programming” (operationalized by the quiz scores) with question quality (operationalized by the “difficulty level” of the questions). We found that for novice learners, the higher the score in the quiz, the lesser was the probability of generating low difficulty question. Interestingly, in the case of advance learners, we found a high probability of generating low difficulty questions by high quiz performers. This shows that the difficulty level can be used to assess the learning of novices, but not of advanced learners. Moreover, it is also possible that in addition to “understanding of programming” the “difficulty level” of the generated question might be affected by other factors. Although the results in the paper show some relation between the traditional assessment scores and PPE-based assessment, we do not claim any statistical correlation.

With content analysis of questions for the concepts that any question relates to, PPE can be used in other domains for assessing the conceptual understanding. As far as the difficulty level and other quality parameters are concerned, different domains may need different rubrics for analysis. The use of PPE as an assessment tool shows that different qualitative aspects of questions can reveal a lot about different aspects of learning, and other cognitive and affective parameters. For example, the account of creativity shows how much students are able to relate the concepts to their prior (real-world or academic) experiences. More of these aspects are to be identified to make PP useful for assessing a wide range of objectives.

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Mishra, S., Iyer, S. An exploration of problem posing-based activities as an assessment tool and as an instructional strategy. RPTEL 10 , 5 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41039-015-0006-0

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Article Contents

Introduction, my teaching trajectory vis-à-vis critical pedagogy, freire’s problem-posing model.

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Freire’s problem-posing model: critical pedagogy and young learners

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Nadine Nelson, Julian Chen, Freire’s problem-posing model: critical pedagogy and young learners, ELT Journal , Volume 77, Issue 2, April 2023, Pages 132–144, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccac017

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The instructional rationale behind critical pedagogy is to provide students the opportunity to voice their personal stories and opinions, and to reflect and act upon social concerns relevant to their daily lives. Students can then practice being agents of transformation in their own lives, starting in the classroom. This paper is based on the first author’s experience of experimenting with critical pedagogy when she was teaching in the UAE. It justifies the suitability of implementing Paulo Freire’s problem-posing model with younger EFL learners. Outlining the tenets of critical pedagogy developed by Freire, the authors support the practical nature of the model and its transference to a primary setting. The authors explicate Freire’s problem-posing model as five phases, providing a background and case study application for each phase. The intention is to present a practical guide for teachers wishing to implement critical approaches in the EFL classroom.

Critical pedagogy has been presented as a curriculum philosophy for language education due to its transformative nature, which can empower students’ critical thinking and lead to student agency and change ( Cranton 2011 ; Jeyaraj and Harland 2014 ). Within a wider EFL context, critical pedagogy affirms the current TEFL discourse which holds that the end goal is not only a development in critical consciousness for the students, but language acquisition and meaningful use of a foreign language ( Lopez-Gopar 2019 ). Graman’s (1988 : 485) account of teaching ESL to rural labourers in Colorado in the late 1970s advocated critical pedagogy as a means to encourage authentic dialogue with his students.

The farm worker ESL class illustrated to me the motivational importance of tying student experience to the process of language. Students are more able to develop linguistically and intellectually when they analyse their own experiences and build their own words to describe and better understand these experiences.

As an EFL teacher teaching in a government school in the UAE, I was motivated by Graman’s (1988) words and was eager to investigate whether this approach could also be applied to my own classroom of young Emirati and Gulf students. I was aware of how little I really knew about my students, and the imbalance the classroom carried where the students were ingesting literacy material that had little connection to their reality. They were all young Muslim girls who were growing up in downtown Abu Dhabi. For my students, the prescribed English textbooks and guided reading materials often become the sole connection with the language and therefore they needed to be placed under scrutiny as to what was being presented ( López-Gopar 2019 ).

I was drawn to critical pedagogy and its problem-posing orientation to pedagogy. The teacher’s role is to establish a safe learning environment that promotes student-generated talk, where topics for discussion are always derived from the students’ own lives and experiences. Hence, students are encouraged to think critically about their own perceptions and judgements, to reflect and gain new understandings about previously held worldviews ( Akbari 2008 ).

So theoretically, it made perfect sense. The reality was that I did not know where to begin. I had all the theory at hand but needed a practical guide to lead me in the right direction. There is a scarcity of hands-on examples for implementing critical approaches in the classroom with younger EFL learners, and where there were case studies, they tended to focus on older students, such as adult learners or high school students ( Norton and Toohey 2004 ; Baladi 2007 ; Crookes 2013 ). There are logical and acceptable reasons for this. Crookes (2013) rightly points out that any prescriptive lesson plan approach is contrary to looking at the unique situational context of the students and is totally against the traditions of critical pedagogy. He further argues that ‘we have almost nothing for beginner levels and EFL contexts’ ( Crookes 2013 : 13), indicating the primacy of developing critical materials for EFL teachers. I was inspired by Graman’s experiences but required a methodology that was rooted in critical pedagogy—a critical approach that could be applied not only with older learners but with younger students as well. I needed a framework that could anchor me, as I was a beginner.

This paper describes how Freire’s problem-posing model ( 1973 ) became the framework I needed, and how it could be applied to the classroom. It is a detailed account of the five phases that should be enacted sequentially. Specifically, it provides a practical guide for other teacher practitioners interested in taking a critical approach with younger language learners.

I arrived in Abu Dhabi in August 2012 and began work at Fatima School (pseudonym applied) as an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher. All students in my class spoke Gulf Arabic as their mother tongue at home, with English being a foreign language. Depending on the student’s years of enrolment in a government school, all participants had been exposed to English through the public schooling system from Grade 1. The class comprised students from diverse family backgrounds within the Gulf region who had settled in the UAE. Not only did I teach Emiratis ( n = 12), but students from Syria ( n = 6), Saudi Arabia ( n = 2), Yemen ( n = 1), Jordan ( n = 1), Egypt ( n = 1), and Sudan ( n = 1).

Believing that second-language students should have ample opportunity to use their target language, my teaching practice for the first two years was mainly finding ways to encourage ‘student talk’. But apart from this central belief, and other observations I had gathered, I had no formal training that prepared me for teaching young EFL learners. In this respect, I was typical of novice language teachers who teach ‘without considering how it is introduced or promoted in certain ways depending on historical, political, socio-cultural and economic considerations in each country’s particular context’ ( Sung and Pederson 2012 : 153). This speaks for most EFL teachers who are trying to make their own overwhelming and often isolating adjustments to a new way of life, resulting in transferring old-school methods based on their prior teaching as a survival strategy. This was my experience, which translated in my initial attempts at creating systems that had served me well in primary schools in Australia. I began experimenting with a typical guided reading programme that had levelled texts on a variety of unfamiliar topics, such as making snowmen, firefighters in Australia, and other topics that presumed prior knowledge of Western culture.

Over time, it became apparent that despite the student’s classroom routines, and my organization of materials, my EFL students struggled to engage fully with the lesson or the reading, and so discussion around themes fell flat. A lack of vocabulary to draw on was of course an issue for my students; however, the problem was much greater than this. Because the girls needed so much teacher input in introducing new concepts, the amount of my talk dominated the lesson, and the gap in the students’ understanding was still apparent. Their reading of the text might be accurate, but robotic, and I could sense the disconnect. Truthfully, what place did a snowman have in the blistering heat of the UAE? Discussion was driven by my questioning, but my students struggled to contribute ideas beyond the standard comprehension expectations. The small-group guided reading discussion felt flat and was frustrating because it was the only time where I could sit with a smaller number of students and have that focused time in conversation. In May 2014, I discarded the guided reading programme and opted for a critical approach using Freire’s problem-posing model ( 1973 ) that I believed would reinvigorate our discussion time, while improving my students’ linguistic outcomes. I was eager to investigate the transferability of Freire’s problem-posing model with my EFL learners, aware that Freire taught his students in their L1, while I would be teaching my students in their L2. This also piqued my research motivation to see if applying the same model could provide useful implications for future research and pedagogy.

The school administration was supportive of my endeavours, as were the parents of the students. My tenure at the school had lent itself to a relationship where I was trusted to explore alternative teaching pedagogies. The duration of the six-week case study was also within the boundaries of how long the school administration was willing to give for my research. Ethical considerations were taken into account at each stage, and encompassed permissions, informed consent, and confidentiality.

Freire’s problem-posing model ( 1973 ) offers a five-phase plan that offers an instructional guide for problem posing across disciplines. Table 1 provides an overview of the five distinct phases that the students move through. The column on the left describes the phases moving progressively, while the column on the right specifies the design of the task used in this case study, and how it correlates to the model.

Freire’s problem-posing model and current study

Phase 1: listen to student histories and language for generative words

According to Freire (1973) , the goal of this first phase of the problem-posing process is to encourage educators to understand the student’s perspectives while ‘forming rewarding relationships and discovering often unsuspected exuberance and beauty in the people’s [students] language’ ( Freire 1973 : 49). This first phase is very relational and is the daily interactions with the students and cannot be forced, insincere, or rushed. For the teacher who is in the position of already building rapport with the students, this phase occurs naturally and builds a foundation for phase 2.

In our case, phase 1 began organically and started at the beginning of the academic year in September 2014. It was the culmination of months of being with the students as their classroom teacher and building those relationships over time. This critical period propelled me to reposition my teacher identity within the school—as a foreigner in Abu Dhabi and a Western-trained teacher with my own set of ideologies that I needed to unpack and come to terms with. In the daily struggle of classroom life that had students exerting their own dominance and power within the four walls of a classroom, and merely by being present alongside the students, future generative themes were directly drawn from the classroom interactions (or discourse) and the students’ own histories. I also started to form a solid understanding of the language issues for the students and their proficiency of communicating in English. One significant aspect is that through spending a prolonged period with my student naturally as their teacher, I also had developed an ear for the speech rhythms and cadences of each individual, enabling my own understanding of their fledgling communication to a greater degree. In this sense, conducting my investigation as a teacher researcher was ecologically sound and context responsive.

Phase 2: selecting generative themes

From the informal interactions with the students during phase 1, generative words are selected from the students’ own vocabulary. These words need to follow a set of criteria set by Freire’s (1973) model. They must have phonemic richness, phonetic difficulty, a pragmatic tone, and an emotional appeal that provokes interest in the students towards the conversation generated by that word. For example, Freire might start with the Portuguese word favela (slum) broken into the syllables fa - ve - la . These syllables would then be used to introduce a family of syllables: fa , fe , fi , fo , and fu . Using these introduced syllables, the students would then construct other words by combining syllables taken from other generative words. In my case, this phase has been slightly adapted, and leans more towards the selection of the generative theme (or investigations of situations such as bullying or language isolation ) rather than a single word, or words. Shor (1992) recommended this approach as particularly suitable for younger students, and others such as Rashidi and Safari (2011) took this further in their work with EFL learners.

In relation to the development of critical pedagogy materials, the themes of the materials should be derived from the learners ‘life situations, needs and interests, and that student motivation to participate in communicative tasks can be increased by tying the content of the materials to the student [situations]’ ( Freire 1973 , cited in Rashidi and Safari 2011 : 255). Note that the word ‘interests’ in relation to critical pedagogy does not refer to the students’ current hobbies or ‘likes’, but rather to problematic realities in their lives (e.g. injustices in the classroom, friendship issues, language and communication barriers during English lessons). In trying to determine problematic realities on behalf of the students, I did not try to stray into territory of which I did not have a full and complete understanding, nor did I attempt to portray experiences outside my students’ own lives. Put differently, the generative themes did not come from my limited understanding of the student’s home situations. Nor was I interested in selecting those themes that might include cultural and religious practices (weddings, religious worship, religious celebrations) beyond my understanding as an outsider. Any societal norms that might have superficially been thought of as ‘oppressive’ or ‘unjust’ were also not for consideration, as these were not generated by my direct observation of the students.

In terms of abiding by governing principles for critical pedagogy materials ( Crookes 2021 : 249), it was considered appropriate that the themes were derived purely from classroom interactions that I had witnessed as a teacher throughout the year. The scenarios mirrored aspects of student life experienced by me as a teacher, which had a problem-posing element that was recognisable and accessible by all students. For this reason, the themes identified during phases 1 and 2 were:

Low-level bullying

Student perceptions of good and bad behaviour

Injustice, corruption of classroom systems

Language barriers to learning.

Phase 3: creating the codification

Codification is the visual representation (e.g. a photograph, slide, or poster) of a real-life situation in which students would normally engage, but which contains an underlying problem that has implications for the viewer. Freire (1973 : 51) defines codification as ‘visual representations as coded situation problems containing elements to be decoded by the groups with the collaboration of the teacher’. The teacher would then prompt and facilitate discussion around the codification. Once discussion was exhausted, the introduction of the generative word would then create a reality-based association for the students to be used later during phase 5 of the model.

With the help of some Grade 5 volunteers, we were able to stage and photograph four distinct scenarios ready for interpretation. The volunteers were my former students and already familiar with the classroom environment and behaviour systems. I directed the volunteers within each of the four scenes, including facial expressions and body language. The student’s own classroom was used in each photograph, which was an important decision in terms of recognition and familiarity. My main goal in the process of codification was to remove anything non-relatable that could cause a feeling of ‘not experiencing’ for even one child. The choice of setting was therefore important in that it needed to be accessible and recognizable to everyone.

Through observing and learning about my students, I discovered that, for some, the majority of their childhood experiences were limited to going to school and being at home. Figures 1–4 are the four codification photographs used in this investigation. Provided here are brief descriptions of the four codification photographs to aid understanding.

The codification Mean Girls ( Figure 1 ) depicts a scenario where one student is reading, oblivious to the others, while two students on the right are whispering about her with their body language staged in a way that suggests what they are saying is not kind. The girl in the middle of the photograph has observed the girls and is captured not knowing what to do. Often the discussion would look more closely at this girl and the choices she would have to make. Topics instigated by this codification included bullying , friendship , and student responsibility .

Codification 1: Mean Girls .

The codification Work and Play ( Figure 2 ) depicts a maths lesson where the student actors had been asked to make a pattern with coloured blocks and draw it in their books. In this codification, three students are completing their workbook while one student has her book closed, and a pile of blocks on her desk, which she is connecting while the other students watch her. This codification enables multiple perspectives and interpretations of how student task completion and engagement are seen by the students. For example, was she ‘playing’ with the blocks or doing her own task set by the teacher? Discussion topics of good girl and bad girl were instigated by this codification.

Codification 2: Work and Play .

The codification Star Student ( Figure 3 ) was derived from our class behaviour system that had been in place for the year. Each week, I would elect two ‘Star Students’ who would have special responsibilities for that week. One of those responsibilities was to award student points, and they were given autonomy to select students carefully and make the awards, without needing to check with me constantly. The system worked best when grounded in honesty and transparency. It was a system that could be, and in fact was, exploited and corrupted, but it gave an opportunity for students to attempt self-autonomy in their classroom environment. In this codification, the Star Students in yellow caps are being whispered to by another student. The fourth student far left, observes this. Topics instigated by this codification included power , friendships , exclusion , and definitions of fairness and injustice .

Codification 3: Star Student .

The codification Language Barrier ( Figure 4 ) depicts a maths lesson familiar to the students. To the left, three students are busily cutting coupons out of a supermarket flyer. These students are on task, helping each other and contributing to the shared goal of completing their task. To the right, one student sits apart from the others, head down and silent. She is not doing anything observable, which sets her apart from the others. This codification instigates discussion around friendship , communication , language barriers , and awareness of others .

Codification 4: Language Barrier .

By taking great care with the codification itself, my investigation sought to follow the principles of Wallerstein’s (1983) and her approach to ‘good’ codification. From her extensive research with EFL and ESL communities in the United States and Brazil, she was able to delineate the qualities that codification must exhibit. According to Wallerstein (1983 : 20), codification should:

• Represent an everyday problem situation that is easily recognisable to students and to which they have emotional connections. • Illustrate as many sides to the contradiction as possible yet be simple enough for students to project their own experience. • Focus on one problem at a time while suggesting links to other themes in people’s lives. • Not provide solutions to the problem but rather stimulate dialogue. • Not present a problem which is overwhelming to the student, such as one where the actions required to solve it are out of reach for the students. There should be capacity for small actions that address the problem, even if they do not solve it.’

Phase 4: the critical pedagogy lesson

In our classroom, the literacy session comprised reading, writing, and grammar activities, and students would form into their groups and move to the activity based on the class schedule. These scheduled activities were familiar to the students, so I was able to work with each small student group without interruption. This routine also allowed me to have a daily 25-minute session of uninterrupted time for implementing the critical pedagogy lesson. The schedule in Table 2 details the groups and the codification focus for that lesson during phase 4.

Critical pedagogy lesson schedule

Once the scheduled small group was seated with me, the critical pedagogy lesson would begin. Following Freire (1973) , this is described as phase 4 where an agenda for the discussion (dialoguing) is encouraged rather than a rigid format. Ideally, there should be a flow of dialogue and sharing as a community of learners, with the teacher as a facilitator for the discussion. Rashidi and Safari (2011) referred to this phase as decodification where there is an exploration and interpretation of the learner’s ideas about the problem being posed, or more specifically, an ‘analysis of the day to day experiences to unmask the previously unperceived realities’ (Heaney, cited in Rashidi and Safari 2011 : 251). Not to be confused with rigid lesson plans and predetermined questions, this agenda was intended to be a post-lesson reflection on the points emerging from the dialogue. Freire’s intentions were that it be a co-investigation, representing the voices of all participants.

Students were each given identical codification photographs to study and could retain the photograph during the session if needed. To open discussion, I would ask display questions that placed less demand on the students. The following sample questions follow Wallerstein’s (1983 : 79) ‘tools for dialogue’:

What do you see in the photograph (e.g. setting, objects, position of students in the setting)?

What is the problem?

Once this level of orientation had taken place, motives, behaviour, feelings, and the rights and wrongs of a real-life problematic situation could be examined. The student’s perception of an event was discussed, and, in some instances, students were prompted to see the situation from various viewpoints. The next level of questioning would always be around likening a situation to the student’s own experience, or whether this had occurred to them personally, and how it affected the student.

How do you feel about it?

Why is there a problem?

What can you do?

This is where decodification exited, and where recodification began. Recodification is the process where learners ‘expand their perceptions of the phenomena to examine the former perception and to recodify the themes more critically’ ( Rashidi and Safari 2011 : 251). Because we had spent so much time unpacking experiences and feelings connected to the situation, the students were ready to offer solutions that had been previously unvoiced. It was also a chance to look at a situation through a variety of perspectives and to question previously held judgements.

Phase 5: discovery

This phase consolidates the linguistic aspect of the programme. Once a visual association has been made with the generative word, the teacher uses this word as the basis for more in-depth lesson such as phonetic makeup and word families, chunking the word into syllables, and re-forming the word to make new words. Freire found that this phase was rapidly mastered by his adult literacy students due to the problem posing and dialogic teaching occurring earlier in his model. As such, phase 5 incorporated a language-learning aspect.

In this study, students used the discussion and codification as a stimulus to then write a short story or retell of events. Students were provided with the codification from their recent discussion and a list of topic words that had been generated from the discussion (e.g. bully, friend, help, fair, playing). Beyond this initial support, students treated sustained writing as an independent activity. And because we kept with Wallerstein’s recommendations of what good codification was, the students only wrote about situations that they had experienced in the class. Introducing difficult or painful topics for ‘discussion’s sake’ is problematic ethically from a student welfare perspective, and I desired to avoid this. Therefore, the topic, while having emotional connection for the students, was never traumatic or overwhelming. Provided in Figure 5 are two sets of separate writing samples. Both students were emergent writers. The first sample (‘Camels’) is taken from journalling about a text used in their guided reading lesson. The second sample (‘Critical Pedagogy Lesson’) shows their writing development during phase 5 after the codification has been discussed in phase 4. The writing productions in terms of length, and diverse use of English vocabulary mark the difference between the two samples for both student A and student B.

Excerpts of two student writing samples in guided reading versus critical pedagogy lessons.

As evidenced in this study, the use of the problem-posing model promoted critical thinking due to the problematized nature of the codification. Because the photographs depicted ‘life as it was’ within the classroom, having the visual stimuli was an important component. Students orally rehearsed their writing by talking about their characters and character intentions, informed by what they were seeing from the codification. Rather than accept the group consensus, students became adept at looking at each scenario differently, which then informed their writing and added interesting twists and turns in the outcome of the stories. The talk that was generated around the codification allowed the teacher to orally rehearse their story development, to follow a plot line, and to decide the suitable outcome. New vocabulary was also rehearsed in context. Findings from this study evidenced a majority preference for the critical pedagogy lessons, with students responding to carefully selected codification that came not only from the source culture, as is recommended ( Rashidi and Safari 2011 ), but on a micro level, from their own classroom experience. Students were able to describe the lessons in terms of ‘thinking big’ and ‘doing a big work’, which had a positive impact on their confidence with their writing. Students were able to link the discussion aspects directly to their writing and acknowledge the ways in which the codification helped to stimulate ideas, thus enabling them to write stories of which they were proud.

This paper serves to offer a clear description of the critical pedagogy project undertaken with my Grade 4 students in the UAE. It illustrates the materials used and the learner’s responses to the materials. The initial trepidation that I felt has been replaced with a confidence that such approaches are appropriate for language learning and have since been replicated in my EFL classroom teaching in other parts of the world. Freire’s problem-posing model remains sensitive to the learner’s unique reality, without being overly formulaic and prescriptive in its methods. It is hoped that this paper could inspire other EFL teachers, especially those working with young learners, to incorporate critical pedagogy to empower students’ worldviews and critical thinking while enhancing their language productions.

The authors

Nadine Nelson is a seasoned primary teacher with over a decade of international experience working in public education in Australia, the UAE, and now as a certified English language teacher in Brunei Darussalam. Her main research focuses on critical pedagogy and how teachers can create talk-rich environments to better support and empower learners of English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D).

Email : [email protected]

Julian Chen is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics/TESOL and the Course Coordinator of Asian Languages at the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia. His research intersects technology-enhanced language learning, task-based language teaching, netnography, and action research. His work has appeared in multiple flagship journals such as Modern Language Journal , TESOL Quarterly , Language Teaching Research , System , Computers & Education , ReCALL , and Computer-assisted Language Learning . He is currently the book review editor of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Journal , and editor of the timely volume, Emergency Remote Teaching and Beyond: Voices from World Language Teachers and Researchers (Springer).

Email : [email protected]

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Education Evolution: Understanding Problem Posing Education

Table of Contents

At Exquisitive Education, we believe in the power of transformative approaches to learning that promote critical thinking and student engagement. One such approach that has gained significant recognition is problem posing education. By actively involving learners in the generation of questions, problem posing education empowers students to take charge of their own learning and explore complex societal issues.

Problem posing education was introduced by renowned Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, as a response to the repressive forces in traditional education systems. It encourages students to become active participants by shaping the learning process through meaningful dialogue and action. Through this approach, learners develop crucial skills such as critical thinking, empathy, and problem-solving, preparing them for success in the modern world.

Key Takeaways:

Problem posing education is a transformative approach to learning that emphasizes critical thinking and student engagement.
It involves the generation of questions by learners, allowing them to actively participate in the learning process.
Problem posing education is based on three principles: the identification of generative themes, dialogue, and action.
Teachers play a vital role as facilitators and co-learners in problem posing education.
Implementing problem posing education in the classroom requires active listening, codifying issues, and promoting critical thinking and reflection.

The Principles of Problem Posing Education

Problem posing education is built upon three fundamental principles: generative themes, dialogue, and action. These principles form the core values of problem posing education, shaping the transformative learning experiences that students undergo.

Generative Themes

Generative themes are central to problem posing education as they emerge from the students’ daily lives and experiences. These themes are issues that have emotional impact and elicit passion and curiosity among learners. By exploring generative themes, students are able to connect their own realities to the broader social context and engage deeply with the subject matter.

Dialogue serves as a critical component of problem posing education, fostering meaningful interactions between students and educators. In the classroom, dialogue becomes a collaborative process wherein knowledge is co-constructed. Through open and respectful dialogue, students and teachers engage in active listening and constructive conversations, enabling a deeper understanding of the generative themes and shared perspectives.

Action is a fundamental aspect of problem posing education, propelling learners towards transformative change in their communities. Through problem posing, students are encouraged to move beyond passive observation and take concrete steps to address the issues at hand. Action empowers students to become active agents of change and apply their critical thinking skills to create positive impact in their immediate surroundings.

Problem posing education is grounded in these principles, which work synergistically to unlock a transformative learning experience for students. By exploring generative themes, engaging in dialogue, and taking meaningful action, learners are able to delve deep into societal issues and develop the critical thinking skills necessary for personal growth and social change.

Implementing Problem Posing in the Classroom

In order to implement problem posing education in the classroom, we need to actively listen to our students. By paying attention to their concerns and allowing them to voice their worries and emotions, we create a supportive learning environment where their voices are valued and heard.

Once we have listened to our students, the next step is codifying the issues raised into discussion starters that promote critical thinking and reflection. This could involve using various forms of expression, such as drawings, photos, written dialogues, stories, skits, or songs. The purpose is to encourage students to think deeply about the issues at hand and engage in meaningful discussions.

By engaging in this process of listening and codifying, students develop their problem posing skills and become active participants in their own learning. They learn to question, analyze, and reflect on complex topics, honing their critical thinking abilities in the process.

Example Discussion Starters:

Here are some examples of discussion starters that can be used to implement problem posing education:

Ask students to draw a picture or take a photograph that represents an issue they feel strongly about. Use these visual stimuli as a starting point for in-depth discussions.
Encourage students to write dialogues or stories based on real-life situations or current events. These narratives can serve as prompts for critical thinking and reflection.
Have students create skits or role plays that explore different perspectives on a particular issue. This encourages empathy and helps students understand the complexities of real-world problems.
Invite students to compose songs or poems that express their thoughts and emotions related to a specific topic. This creative approach fosters self-expression and deepens engagement with the subject matter.

Benefits of Implementing Problem Posing Education

Implementing problem posing education in the classroom offers several benefits:

Enhanced critical thinking: Problem posing activities challenge students to think critically, analyze complex issues, and develop their own perspectives.
Deeper engagement: By actively participating in problem posing activities, students become more engaged in their learning, leading to increased motivation and better retention of knowledge.
Development of reflective skills: Through problem posing, students learn to reflect on their own thought processes, assumptions, and biases, fostering self-awareness and growth.
Empowerment and ownership: Problem posing education empowers students to take ownership of their learning. They become active contributors to the classroom community and feel more invested in their education.

By implementing problem posing education, we create a dynamic and inclusive learning environment that fosters critical thinking, reflection, and student empowerment.

Problem Posing in Primary Grades

Problem posing in primary grades plays a pivotal role in shaping the minds of young learners. By introducing them to real-world issues and encouraging critical thinking, we empower these students to become active contributors to their communities.

Let’s consider an example that highlights the power of problem posing in the primary grades. In a classroom where a food drive was announced, several students privately confided in their teachers that they couldn’t contribute because their families relied on the food shelf themselves. This brought attention to the issue of poverty and food insecurity within the student population.

Responding to this revelation, the teachers saw an opportunity for a problem posing activity centered around poverty and food insecurity. Through this activity, students were able to explore the complex issues associated with poverty, cultivate empathy, and develop perspective-taking skills. They were given the opportunity to step into the shoes of those less fortunate, helping them gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by individuals and families experiencing poverty.

Moreover, the problem posing activity didn’t end with gaining knowledge alone. The students were inspired to take action and engage with their community to address the problem of food insecurity. From organizing food drives to raising awareness about local resources, these young learners actively participated in community engagement efforts, making a tangible contribution.

Problem posing in primary grades not only educates students about social issues but also instills a sense of responsibility and compassion. By exploring such topics, students become agents of change, developing a genuine understanding of societal challenges and fostering a commitment to actively making a difference in their communities.

With problem posing education, we empower young learners by encouraging them to think critically and engage with the world around them. Through activities centered on poverty and other important issues, primary grade students develop essential perspective-taking skills and become active participants in community engagement.

By integrating problem posing activities into primary grade education, we foster empathy, critical thinking, and community engagement. These activities empower young learners to develop a deeper understanding of important societal issues and become agents of positive change.

Liberatory Education and Problem Posing

Liberatory education, as espoused by Paulo Freire, is closely aligned with problem posing education. It aims to transform societies by empowering oppressed individuals and communities through education. One of the key principles of liberatory education is recognizing and building upon the strengths and capabilities that learners bring with them. This approach starts with the experiences of the learners and values their existing knowledge and expertise. By integrating problem posing into liberatory education, students are encouraged to critically reflect on their relationship with the world and take action to effect change.

Recognizing Strengths and Capabilities

In liberatory education, we acknowledge that every student possesses unique strengths and capabilities that can contribute to social and economic transformation. By fostering a strengths-based approach, we shift our focus from deficits to the inherent talents and skills of each learner. This approach allows for a more inclusive and empowering learning environment, where students are valued for their diverse perspectives and contributions.

Critical Education for Social Transformation

Central to liberatory education is the idea of critical education, which encourages students to question oppressive systems and engage in transformative action. By critically examining societal structures and power dynamics, students develop a deeper understanding of the social issues at play and are better equipped to advocate for change. Problem posing education serves as a catalyst for critical thinking and reflection, providing students with the tools to challenge and reshape existing norms.

Embracing a Strengths-Based Approach

Incorporating problem posing into liberatory education allows us to harness the strengths and capabilities of learners. By starting with the experiences and knowledge that students bring, we create a learning environment that is student-centered and empowering. This approach acknowledges and values the expertise that students already possess, elevating their voices and contributions in the educational journey.

To illustrate the impact of a strengths-based approach in liberatory education, let’s take a look at the table below, which highlights the transformational potential of this methodology:

By leveraging a strengths-based approach in combination with problem posing education, we can foster a transformative learning experience that equips students with the critical thinking skills and agency needed to navigate the complexities of the world.

To learn more about how problem posing and liberatory education intersect, visit https://exquisitiveeducation.com .

The Role of the Educator in Problem Posing Education

In problem posing education, the role of the educator is multifaceted. As a facilitator, the teacher guides the learning process, creating an environment that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and collaboration. Through questioning techniques and the provision of important information, the educator helps students explore complex concepts and develop a deeper understanding.

However, the role of the educator goes beyond simply facilitating the learning process. In problem posing education, the teacher becomes a co-learner, actively engaging in the exploration alongside the students. The educator encourages students to take charge of their own learning, empowering them to ask questions, give helpful ideas, and carry out their own investigations.

The educator’s ultimate goal is to create a safe and supportive learning environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and expressing their thoughts. By embracing the roles of facilitator and co-learner, the educator establishes a collaborative relationship with students, fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility over their learning journey.

Creating a Safe and Supportive Learning Environment

In problem posing education, creating a safe and supportive learning environment is paramount. The educator encourages open dialogue, respecting and valuing the diverse perspectives and ideas that students bring to the table. By promoting a culture of respect and collaboration, the educator sets the stage for meaningful discussions and exploration.

Furthermore, the educator emphasizes the importance of critical thinking throughout the problem posing process. By encouraging students to question, evaluate, and analyze concepts, the educator helps students develop essential skills for lifelong learning. This active engagement fosters a sense of curiosity and intellectual growth, promoting deeper understanding and meaningful connections.

Nurturing Curiosity and Collaboration

In problem posing education, curiosity and collaboration are essential components of the learning process. The educator cultivates curiosity by asking thought-provoking questions, sparking students’ interest and encouraging them to delve deeper into the subject matter. By nurturing curiosity, the educator fosters a love for learning and encourages students to explore beyond the classroom.

In addition, the educator promotes collaboration among students, recognizing the value of collective intelligence. Collaborative problem posing activities allow students to learn from each other, share perspectives, and collectively tackle complex issues. This fosters a sense of community and encourages students to develop important teamwork and communication skills.

By assuming the roles of facilitator and co-learner, the educator plays a crucial part in problem posing education. Through their guidance, questioning techniques, and support, educators inspire students to become active participants in their own learning. The educator’s emphasis on curiosity, collaboration, and critical thinking sets the stage for transformative educational experiences.

To learn more about problem posing education and its impact on student learning, visit our website.

Problem Posing as an Instructional Strategy

Problem posing can be a highly effective instructional strategy that promotes exploration-based learning, cultivates student ownership, and nurtures critical thinking skills. By actively engaging students in the process of generating questions, we empower them to take ownership of their learning journey and develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Through problem posing, students are encouraged to actively participate in the learning process, fostering a sense of curiosity and exploration. This approach prompts students to examine different perspectives, analyze complex problems, and develop innovative solutions.

By posing their own questions, students become active creators of knowledge rather than passive receivers of information. This active engagement empowers students to explore in-depth, think critically, and apply their learning to real-world challenges.

Exploration-Based Learning

Problem posing as an instructional strategy promotes exploration-based learning, where students are encouraged to explore, inquire, and investigate. Instead of relying solely on information presented by the teacher, students actively seek out knowledge, discover different resources, and engage in hands-on experiences.

This approach allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter as they explore various facets and uncover connections between different concepts. It encourages students to delve beyond surface-level knowledge and fosters a genuine understanding of the material.

Student Ownership

Problem posing empowers students to take ownership of their learning. By actively participating in the process of generating questions, students become co-creators of knowledge. This sense of ownership creates a more meaningful and engaging learning experience.

When students take ownership of their learning, they are more motivated and invested in their educational journey. They become active participants rather than passive recipients, driving their own learning and pursuing areas of personal interest.

Critical Thinking Skills

Problem posing as an instructional strategy plays a vital role in developing critical thinking skills. By generating their own questions, students are encouraged to think deeply, analyze information critically, and evaluate multiple perspectives.

This approach prompts students to engage in higher-order thinking and problem-solving. They learn to question assumptions, consider alternative viewpoints, and develop well-reasoned arguments. These critical thinking skills are invaluable in equipping students for success in their academic and professional lives.

Problem Posing as an Assessment Tool

Problem posing goes beyond traditional assessments to provide a unique perspective on students’ understanding and application of concepts. By asking students to generate their own problems, educators can assess their knowledge unfolding process and their ability to think critically and creatively. This form of assessment not only evaluates students’ comprehension of subject matter but also their capacity to apply that knowledge in practical and innovative ways.

In the context of an introductory programming course, problem posing activities can be particularly effective in assessing students’ mastery of computational thinking concepts. Computational thinking refers to the ability to break down complex problems, logically analyze them, and devise efficient solutions using algorithms and patterns. By posing problems that require computational thinking skills, educators can evaluate students’ ability to apply computational principles, such as abstraction, pattern recognition, and problem decomposition, to real-world scenarios.

The quality of the problems posed by students serves as a valuable indicator of their depth of understanding and their ability to transfer knowledge to novel contexts. Sophisticated problems that demonstrate a clear grasp of concepts and connect multiple ideas showcase higher levels of comprehension and critical thinking. On the other hand, problems that lack clarity or fail to integrate relevant knowledge may indicate areas where students require additional support and guidance.

By incorporating problem posing into the assessment framework, educators can gain insights into students’ cognitive processes, analytical skills, and ability to think beyond what has been explicitly taught. This approach cultivates a deeper understanding of the subject matter and encourages students to explore complex problems from multiple perspectives.

Incorporating Problem Posing into Assessments

To effectively integrate problem posing into assessments, educators can utilize a variety of strategies. One approach is to provide students with a set of guiding prompts or principles related to the topic being assessed. These prompts can inspire students to generate their own unique problems that showcase their understanding of key concepts and principles.

Another strategy involves creating rubrics or assessment criteria that evaluate the quality of the problems posed by students. These criteria can include factors such as clarity, relevance, complexity, and innovation. By providing explicit guidelines for what constitutes a well-posed problem, educators can ensure consistency and fairness in their assessments.

Furthermore, peer evaluation can be employed as a valuable assessment tool in problem posing activities. By having students assess and provide feedback on each other’s problems, educators can foster collaboration, critical thinking, and constructive peer learning. This process encourages students to evaluate problems from different perspectives and helps them develop a deeper appreciation for the complexity and diversity of problem-solving approaches.

Example Problem Posing Assessment

By designing problem posing assessments that align with the learning objectives and desired competencies, educators can gain comprehensive insights into students’ abilities and progress. This approach not only enhances the assessment process but also empowers students to become active participants in their own learning journey.

Strategies for Effective Problem Posing

In order to engage in effective problem posing, students can employ a range of strategies that promote critical thinking, creativity, and a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. By applying their existing knowledge, organizing information, probing deeper into the topic, comparing and contrasting different perspectives, connecting concepts to real-world situations, varying their problem-solving approach, and implementing solutions, students can enhance their problem posing skills.

Applying existing knowledge allows students to draw on their prior understanding and make relevant connections to identify the concepts that are crucial to the problem at hand.

Organizing information helps students to generate meaningful questions by structuring their thoughts and identifying the key elements they need to consider.

Probing deeper into the topic involves asking probing questions such as “why” and “how.” This helps students explore the underlying causes and intricacies of the problem, leading to a more comprehensive understanding.

Comparing and contrasting different perspectives allows students to consider various viewpoints and analyze the implications and potential solutions associated with each perspective.

Connecting concepts to real-world situations bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. Students can explore how the concepts they have learned can be implemented in real-life scenarios.

By varying their problem-solving approach, students can explore different methods, strategies, and techniques to address the problem. This fosters creativity and encourages students to think outside the box.

Implementing solutions involves taking concrete steps to address the problem at hand. This allows students to apply their problem posing skills in a practical manner and make a positive impact in their communities.

Overall, these strategies empower students to think critically, approach problems from multiple angles, and cultivate a deep understanding of the subject matter. By incorporating these strategies into their problem posing practices, students can develop a range of skills that are essential for success in the modern world.

The Relationship Between Problem Posing and Traditional Assessments

In the realm of education, the relationship between problem posing and traditional assessments, such as quizzes, is a crucial aspect to consider. It provides educators with valuable insights into students’ learning and allows for a comprehensive evaluation of their progress. By analyzing the alignment between the quality of problems posed and students’ performance in traditional assessments, educators can gain a deeper understanding of their students’ understanding of the subject matter.

Value of Problem Posing

Problem posing, as an educational approach, encourages students to think critically and creatively. When students are engaged in the process of generating their own questions, it reflects their ability to apply their knowledge and understanding. The quality of the problems posed by students indicates their grasp of the subject matter and their capacity for higher-order thinking skills.

For an interactive demonstration of problem posing in action, visit our website Exquisitive Education.

Assessment Alignment

By examining the alignment between the quality of problems posed and students’ performance on traditional assessments, educators can identify areas where students may have misconceptions or gaps in their understanding. If there is a disconnect between the problems posed and the quiz scores, it indicates the need for further support and remediation tailored to address these areas of weakness.

Moreover, assessing the alignment between problem posing and traditional assessments offers an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of both methods. It provides insights into the effectiveness of problem posing as an instructional approach and directly informs instructional decision-making.

The Comprehensive View

By considering both problem posing and traditional assessments, educators can obtain a comprehensive view of students’ learning outcomes. Problem posing allows for a holistic evaluation of students’ critical thinking abilities and their capacity to apply knowledge in real-world contexts. On the other hand, traditional assessments provide a standardized measure to assess foundational knowledge and understanding.

By combining the perspectives gained from problem posing and traditional assessments, educators can develop a more complete understanding of their students’ learning journeys, identify areas for improvement, and adapt instruction to best support student growth.

In the next section, we will explore the benefits and challenges of problem posing education, shedding light on its impact on student engagement, critical thinking skills, teacher preparation, and the complexity of assessments.

Benefits and Challenges of Problem Posing Education

Problem posing education offers numerous benefits that contribute to a more engaging and impactful learning experience for students. By actively involving students in the process of generating questions and exploring complex issues, problem posing education fosters critical thinking, cultivates student agency, and promotes ownership of learning. Students become active participants in their education, developing essential skills and preparing for lifelong learning.

Increased student engagement is one of the key advantages of problem posing education. When students are given the opportunity to generate their own questions, they become more invested in the learning process. Their curiosity is piqued, and they are motivated to explore, discover, and find solutions. This heightened engagement leads to deeper learning and a more meaningful educational experience.

Critical thinking skills are another significant benefit of problem posing education. By encouraging students to ask questions, analyze problems, and evaluate different perspectives, this approach nurtures their ability to think critically and solve complex problems. Through the process of generating questions, students develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter and learn to approach challenges with creativity and analytical thinking.

However, implementing problem posing education also presents certain challenges that educators need to address. One of the primary challenges is teacher preparation. Educators must be equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively facilitate problem posing activities. They need to create a supportive learning environment, guide students’ question generation process, and provide constructive feedback to enhance their problem posing skills.

Assessing problem posing skills can also be complex and time-consuming . Evaluating the quality and depth of the problems generated by students requires careful analysis and consideration. It involves assessing their ability to formulate relevant questions, demonstrate critical thinking, and propose innovative solutions. This complexity adds an additional layer to the assessment process, requiring educators to devise appropriate evaluation methods and criteria.

Despite these challenges, problem posing education holds great potential for transforming the educational experience and preparing students for lifelong learning. By fostering student engagement and nurturing critical thinking skills , this approach empowers learners and equips them with the necessary tools to succeed in a rapidly evolving world. With proper teacher preparation and thoughtful assessment strategies, problem posing education can create a dynamic and impactful learning environment that benefits students and educators alike.

Problem posing education is a powerful pedagogical approach that promotes transformative learning, critical thinking, and student empowerment. By actively engaging students in the generation of questions and the exploration of complex issues, we can foster a deeper understanding of subject matter and encourage students to take meaningful action in their communities.

Implementing problem posing education may come with its challenges, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. This approach creates a more inclusive and student-centered learning environment, where students are active participants in their own education. As they grapple with real-world problems and develop critical thinking skills, students are empowered to become agents of change, both in their personal lives and in society at large.

In a rapidly changing world, problem posing education equips students with the necessary skills to navigate complexity and adapt to new challenges. By fostering a deep understanding of subject matter and encouraging students to critically engage with the world around them, we prepare them to be lifelong learners and active contributors to their communities. Problem posing education is not just about acquiring knowledge; it’s about developing the skills and mindset needed to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape.

Embracing problem posing education is an investment in the future, as it empowers students to think critically, explore diverse perspectives, and take ownership of their learning. Through this transformative approach, we can create a generation of empowered individuals who are equipped to solve complex problems, challenge traditional norms, and make a positive impact on society. To learn more about problem posing education and its transformative potential, visit Exquisitive Education.

About The Author

Ethan Emerson

Ethan Emerson is a passionate author and dedicated advocate for the transformative power of education. With a background in teaching and a love for writing, Ethan brings a unique blend of expertise and creativity to his contributions on ExquisitiveEducation.com .His articles are a delightful mix of insightful knowledge and engaging storytelling, aiming to inspire and empower learners of all ages. Ethan's mission is to ignite the spark of curiosity and foster a love for learning in every reader.Ethan Emerson, is your companion in the realm of general education exploration. With a passion for knowledge, He delves into the intricate world of Education Expenses & Discounts , uncovering financial insights for your educational journey. From the vitality of Physical Education to the synergy of Education & Technology , Ethan's here to bridge the gap between traditional and innovative learning methods. Discover the art of crafting impressive Resume & Personal Documentation in Education , as well as insights into diverse Career Paths, Degrees & Educational Requirements . Join Ethan in navigating through a sea of Educational Courses & Classes , exploring the nuances of various Education Systems , and understanding the empowering realm of Special Education . With an eye on Teaching & Teachers , He offers a glimpse into the world of educators who shape minds. Let's unlock Studying Tips & Learning Methods that turn education into a delightful journey of growth with Exquisitive Education .

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The Freirean Approach to Adult Literacy Education

David Spener National Center for ESL Literacy Education April 1990, Revised November 1992

What is the Freirean approach?

The Freirean approach to adult literacy education bases the content of language lessons on learners' cultural and personal experiences. Named for Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, the approach has also been referred to as the problem-posing approach (Auerbach & Wallerstein, 1987;Wallerstein, 1983), the psycho-social approach (Hope, Timmel, & Hodzi, 1984; Fargo, 1981), the learner-centered approach (Anorve, 1989), the liberatory approach (Shor & Freire, 1987; Facundo, 1984), and the participatory approach (Jurmo, 1987). It has been used in the developing world in successful native and second language literacy projects sponsored by governments and international voluntary organizations in both rural and urban settings. In the United States, many community-based organizations have used the approach in their nonformal educational programs for developing basic literacy in English, native languages other than English, and English as a second language. Because the Freirean approach goes by a number of different names and Freire's ideas have had such an impact on adult education internationally, there are many literacy educators in the United States who have incorporated elements of the approach into their teaching without realizing that they have been influenced by Paulo Freire.

Freire's approach has been called "deeply contextual" (Chacoff, 1989, p. 49) because in it learning to read and write flows from the discussion of themes of importance to adult learners, drawn from their real-life experiences. Formal language study plays a secondary role to learners' conceptual development. Learners acquire individual reading and writing skills through a process of inquiry into the nature of real-life problems facing the community of learners. In this sense, the Freirean approach can be considered a variant of the whole language approach to literacy described by Newman (1985), Goodman (1986), Hamayan and Pfleger (1987), and Simich-Dudgeon (1989).

The thematic content of literacy education in Freirean programs is drawn from the culture of the participants. In Freirean terms, culture "includes how people labor, create, and make life choices" (Wallerstein, 1983, p. 5). Culture is not a static set of customs, religious beliefs, social attitudes, forms of address and attire, and foods; rather, it is a dynamic process of transformation and change laden with conflicts to resolve and choices to be made both individually and as a community. Jurmo (1987) categorizes Freire as an exponent of "literacy for social change" because Freire argues that unjust social conditions are the cause of illiteracy and that the purpose of adult basic education is to enable learners to participate actively in liberating themselves from the conditions that oppress them.

This liberatory aspect of Freire's philosophy is important for program management as well as for learning. Many programs following the Freirean approach have adopted management structures that give students significant control over the direction of present and future educational activities (Jurmo, 1987; Collins, Balmuth, & Jean, 1989).

What are the key features of the Freirean approach?

The two most distinctive features of the Freirean Approach are dialogue and problem-posing . Freire describes dialogue as an "I-thou relationship between two subjects" in which both parties confront each other as knowledgeable equals in a situation of genuine two-way communication (Freire, 1973, p. 52). Teachers possess knowledge of reading and writing; students possess knowledge of the concrete reality of their culture. As with advocates of other humanistic teaching approaches, Freirean educators vehemently reject what Freire has termed "the banking concept of education," where the teacher's primary role is to transmit knowledge to students, "depositing" information into students as they would deposit money into a bank "(Freire, 1970, 1973; Graman, 1989; Auerbach & Burgess, 1985). Instead, Freirean education is a mutual process of reflecting upon and developing insights into the students' evolving culture. The lecture format, where the teacher talks and the students passively receive information, is replaced by the "culture circle" where teachers and students face one another and discuss issues of concern in their own lives (Freire, 1970, 1973).

The term "problem posing" is often misunderstood, perhaps because of the negative connotations given the word "problem" and the frequent reference to problem-solving skills in education. In the Freirean approach, cultural themes in the form of open-ended problems are incorporated into materials such as pictures, comics, short stories, songs, and video dramas, that are then used to generate discussion. The teacher asks a series of open-ended questions about these materials that encourage students to elaborate upon what they see in them. Ultimately, this questioning process leads the students to define the real-life problem being represented, discuss its causes, and propose actions that can be taken to solve it (Freire, 1970, 1973; Wallerstein, 1983). Ideally, the solutions evolving from the group's discussion will entail actions in which reading and writing skills are required, thus giving learners a concrete purpose for the literacy they are developing. Freirean advocates contrast this problem-"posing" with problem-"solving" approaches to literacy instruction. In problem-solving approaches, educators identify students' life problems for them a priori, and then design lessons to give students the knowledge they need to solve those problems (Freire, 1970; Auerbach & Burgess, 1985; Noble, 1984; Faigin, 1985; Graman, 1988; Fargo, 1981).

How is the Freirean approach used in native language literacy education?

The methods developed by Freire in Brazil in the early 1960s for native language literacy are still in use in many developing countries in Latin America and Africa. In the United States, organizations such as the Hispanic Literacy Council in Chicago; Bronx Educational Services, Union Settlement House, El Barrio Popular, and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in New York; BASE in Los Angeles; and the Adult Literacy Resources Institute in Boston have used Freire's methods to teach initial literacy in Spanish, in what are sometimes referred to as Basic Education in the Native Language (BENL) programs.

Freire developed his approach working with a team of anthropologists, educators, and students in Brazil on a multiphase plan to develop a program of initial literacy instruction in Portuguese for rural peasants and villagers. The first phase of the Brazilian literacy plan consisted of an extended period of social research in the communities where the program was to be implemented. Members of the literacy team spent time in those communities, participating in informal conversations with residents, observing their culture, and listening to their life stories. The team researched the vocabulary of the communities, looking for recurring words and themes to be included in materials for the literacy program. In the second phase of the plan, the literacy team chose "generative words" from their vocabulary lists that would later be used to help students develop elementary skills in decoding and encoding print. Generative words contain syllables that are separated and recombined to form other words. (According to Freire, 1970, In Portuguese only fifteen words are needed to generate all the other words in the language.) Like Ashton-Warner concept of "key words" (1963), Freire believed that generative words should have special affective importance to learners and should evoke the social, cultural, and political contexts in which learners use them (Freire, 1973).

In Brazil, the building of the conceptual analysis skills needed for decoding a written text was carried out through the oral discussion of cultural themes present in people's daily lives (Freire, 1973). In the third phase of the Brazilian program, these themes were presented in a symbolic, codified way in the form of drawings of familiar scenes in the life of the community. Illiterate adults were encouraged to "read" their reality by analyzing the elements of the scenes using some of the same decoding tools, such as background knowledge and contextual information, that they would with a written code. Each scene depicted conflicts found within the community for students to recognize, analyze, and attempt to resolve as a group. The generative words from the vocabulary lists compiled in the first phase of the plan were embedded in these codifications (Freire, 1973). In the course of identifying the problem in a given code and seeking its solution, learners would "name" the embedded generative words, giving teachers the raw material for developing reading and writing exercises.

The final phase of planning the literacy program involved the preparation of so-called discovery cards based on the generative words discussed above. Each discovery card contained a generative word separated into its component syllables, giving learners the opportunity to recombine syllables to form other words in their vocabulary (Freire, 1973). Use of the discovery card method was in keeping with established syllabary techniques frequently used to teach word-attack skills in phonetically and orthographically regular languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. (See Gudschinsky, 1967.) Recently, however, some Freirean practitioners working in BENL programs in the United States have begun to question the validity of total reliance on the syllabary method and are urging a shift toward more use of "whole-word" and "text-focused" methods (Rabideau, 1989), discussed in more detail below.

How can the Freirean approach be adapted for use in ESL literacy education?

Literacy teachers in the United States and Canada who work with adult nonnative speakers of English have attempted to apply Freire's general approach using compatible ESL teaching methods and techniques. In doing so, they have had to overcome two important difficulties. First, Freire's approach assumes that learners are highly knowledgeable about the culture in which they live, and that they are expert speakers of the language that they are learning to read and write. For nonnative speakers of English in predominantly English-speaking countries, neither of these conditions pertains. How can teachers pose problems for their classes to discuss in English, and then develop literacy lessons based on these discussions, if their students cannot speak English?

A number of authors have suggested that beginning ESL students can develop problem-posing and dialogue skills rather early on in their acquisition of English. Teachers can foster the process by focusing their initial instruction on development of their students' descriptive vocabularies and teaching them to use questions to exchange information in English. Some familiar ESL methods and techniques that have been used by Freirean practitioners to develop students' descriptive and questioning abilities have included language experience stories, oral histories, Total Physical Response activities, picture stories, the use of flash cards to introduce new vocabulary and structures, and skits conducted with puppets (Wallerstein, 1983; Nash, Cason, Rhum, McGrail, & Gomez-Sanford, in press; Faigin, 1985; Auerbach & Wallerstein, 1987; Barndt & Marino, 1983).

A second problem for ESL teachers is that the spelling and syllabic structures of English do not lend themselves to the syllabary method originally used by Freire in Spanish and Portuguese. How, then, can generative words be used to build word-attack skills in reading and writing? Ra£l A¤orve, a literacy trainer for California Literacy, uses a whole-word and word-family method. Learners memorize the spelling of each new vocabulary word and place them in lists of other words on the basis of similar morphological structure or related meaning. For example, the word "American" might appear in two different word lists: in one with words like "African," "Dominican," and "Canadian," and in another with words suggested by students like "apple pie," "Statue of Liberty," and "rich" (A¤orve, personal communication, October 10, 1988).

Other practitioners adapt the use of generative words to the phonics method of reading instruction, where students learn the spelling patterns of English in order to be able to sound out new words they need to read and write. In languages such as Spanish and Portugguese, generative words contain syllables that can be recombined to form new words. In English, generative words are used to teach other words witht he same sound-letter correspondences or similar morphological structure (Long & Speigel-Podnecky, 1988). Still others have abandoned the use of generative words altogether in favor of other whole language techniques developed for English.

How can the ESL curriculum be based on students' life experiences and cultures when teachers do not speak students' languages?

In her book Language and Culture in Conflict, Nina Wallerstein (1983) emphasizes that ESL teachers and students typically come from different cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds that need to be recognized as equally valid. To bridge this experience gap, teachers must make special efforts to get to know the realities faced by students in their personal lives and communities, either by living among their students or by observing in class and in the community. Wallerstein recommends that teachers visit the homes of their students as invited guests to learn first hand about their lives and families. To learn about the cultural attributes of students, teachers should attempt to be present as observers at times of cultural transmission from the older generation to the younger (social rites and child-rearing practices) and of cultural preservation (festivals and historic celebrations in the students' neighborhoods). They should learn about times of cultural disruption by asking students either in simplified English or through an interpreter to describe their immigration to the host country and to compare their lives in the two countries. Teachers should also become familiar with the neighborhoods where students live, walking in them with students, taking photographs, and bringing realia back to class to discuss. In class, teachers should observe student interactions, including body language, and take note of students' actions, because these usually reveal their priorities and problems. The teacher should also invite students to share objects from their cultures with others in class.

Having a bilingual aide in the ESL class can also facilitate dialogue on the cultural themes and problems that generate the curriculum in the Freirean approach. Hemmendinger (1987) found cultural themes and problems for the curriculum through classroom observation and conversations with her Laotian Hmong students. Sometimes problem-posing activities resulted from the sharing of cultural information; at other times the discussion of a problem led to intercultural dialogue. In one instance, for example, she found a student closely examining all the potted plants in the class. When Hemmindinger, through the bilingual aide, inquired as to why the student was interested in the plants, she found that he was a practitioner of Hmong herbal medicine. This theme led to a discussion of Hmong health and medicinal practices as they compared to those practiced by the dominant culture in Canada and problems that students were having as they confronted the Canadian health-care system.

Can the Freirean approach be used with competency-based approaches to ESL?

Although some educators advocating the Freirean approach have criticized competency-based ESL as being a form of "banking education" (Auerbach & Burgess, 1985; Graman, 1988), other Freire-inspired ESL teachers have described their use of competency-based instruction within the Freirean framework to teach specific language skills and functions (Faigin, 1985; Hemmendinger, 1987). Working with Central American refugees in Washington, DC, Spener (1990a) adapted the Freirean approach to the selection and development of ESL competencies in the curriculum. In bilingual discussion workshops, Spener and his students engaged in posing problems in which the solutions were related to the learning of English. The product of each of these workshops was a class syllabus agreed on by the group that included the daily situations where students felt improving their English would help them most. For each situation on a class's syllabus, Spener wrote out specific ESL competencies in Spanish and English that he would then bring back to class for the students to reject, modify, or approve for inclusion in their syllabus. The syllabus, which was called the study agenda, served as a guide to follow, allowing Spener and his students to incorporate other elements of dialogue and problem"posing in class sessions to enrich the educational process (Spener, 1990a, 1990b).

For Further Reading

Association for Community Based Education. (1988). Literacy for empowerment: A resource handbook for community based educators. Washington, DC: Author. (ERIC No. ED 321 593) Auerbach, E.R. (1989). Toward a social-contextual approach to family literacy. Harvard Educational Review , 59, 105-151. Auerbach, E. R. (in press). Making meaning, making change: Participatory curriculum development for adult ESL literacy. Washington, DC and McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems. Fauteux, D., & Alamo, M. (1991). Palabras de lucha y alegria [Words of struggle and joy] . Syracuse, NY: New Readers Press. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education . New York: Bergin and Garvey. Rivera, K.M. (1990). Developing native language literacy in language minority adults. ERIC Digest. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse on Literacy Education. Vella, J. K. (1989). Learning to teach: Training of trainers for community development. Washington, DC: OEF International.

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Freire on Freedom of Education

When Paulo Freire examines the prevailing education system of his time, he concludes that education is more along the lines of propaganda rather than learning. His paper compares education with how much freedom it gives the student, and he labels traditional education as the “banking” concept. The banking concept is sustained by depositing bits of information into a student’s brain without letting the student question how it works or why it is relevant. Freire argues that any intellectual freedom that academia can offer is crushed by banking education because the students lose the ability to think for themselves and depend on the teachers to gain all of their knowledge.

As an alternative, Freire proposes “problem-posing” education as an alternative to banking education. Under problem-posing, the teacher would teach as well as learn from the student. This way, the student has a more active role in her educational experience. The ability to ask questions and to come up with their own theories is the basis of the students’ role in problem-posing. This is similar to what “progressive” education strives to emulate in the classroom.

John Dewey probably would have looked at problem-posing as an accommodating substitute for traditional education. Both Freire and Dewey saw traditional education as too restrictive and mechanical, however, Dewey also expressed his concern with an education that seeks to maximize “freedom”. Whereas Freire states the education is should provide a path to freedom, Dewey argues that education should be based off of experiences and encourage a lifelong path to gaining knowledge and wisdom through the accumulation of beneficial experiences.

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5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren’t Backed by Research

Making adjustments to these common misconceptions can turn dubious strategies into productive lessons, the research suggests.

Not every learning myth requires teachers to pull up stakes and start all over again—at least not entirely. There are some commonly held misconceptions that contain a nugget of wisdom but need to be tweaked in order to align with the science of learning.

Sometimes, in other words, you’re already halfway there. Here are five mostly myths, from the power of doodling to the motivating role of grades, that educators can quickly adjust and turn to their advantage.

1. Doodling Improves Focus and Learning

When we write about the power of drawing to learn, we often hear from readers who feel compelled to defend an old habit: “See, I told you that when I was doodling, I was still paying attention!” But doodling—which is commonly defined as “an aimless or casual scribble or sketch” and often consists of marginalia like cartoon characters, geometric patterns, or pastoral scenes—is distinct from what researchers call “task-related drawing.” And doodling, in this sense, is not associated with improvements in focus or academic outcomes.

In fact, both cognitive load theory and experimental studies are generally downbeat on doodling. Students who sketch complicated scenes or designs as they try to process a lesson on plate tectonics, according to the first theory, are engaging in competitive cognitive tasks and will generally underperform on both. Doodling, like all drawing, is cognitively intensive, involving complex feedback loops between visual, sensorimotor, attentional, and planning regions of the brain and body. Because our ability to process information is finite, drawing and learning about different things at the same time is a simple question of too much.

Research confirms the theory. A 2019 study pitted off-task doodling against typical learning activities like “task-related drawing” and writing. In three separate but related experiments, task-related drawing and writing beat out doodling in terms of recall—by margins as large as 300 percent. How to fix it: Sketching what you are actually learning—from representational drawings of cells or tectonic boundaries to the creation of concept maps and organizational drawings—is, in fact, a powerful learning strategy (see research here , here , and here ), and that applies “regardless of one’s artistic talent,” a 2018 study confirms. Try to harness a student’s passion for doodling by allowing them to submit academic sketches as work products. To get even more bang for your buck, ask them to annotate their drawings, or talk you through them—which will encode learning even more deeply, according to research .

2. Reading Aloud In Turn Improves Fluency

Often called round robin reading (RRR), I resorted to it when I taught years ago—and it appears that it’s still frequently used, judging from a 2019 blog by literacy expert Timothy Shanahan and comments on a 2022 Cult of Pedagogy post on the topic. Teachers deploy RRR—during which the whole class follows a text while students read sections consecutively—for good reasons: Arguably, the practice encourages student engagement, gives teachers the opportunity to gauge oral reading fluency, and has a built-in classroom management benefit as well. Students are generally silent and (superficially) attentive when a peer is reading.

But according to Shanahan, and the literacy professors Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones, the practice has long been frowned upon. In an influential 2012 review of relevant literature , Hilden and Jones cut straight to the point: “We know of no research evidence that supports the claim that RRR actually contributes to students becoming better readers, either in terms of their fluency or comprehension.”

In fact, RRR has plenty of problems. Individual students using RRR may accumulate less than three hours of oral reading time over the course of a year, according to Shanahan—and Hilden and Jones say that students who are following along during the activity tend to “subvocalize” as they track the reader, reducing their own internal reading speed unnecessarily. RRR also has the unfortunate effects of stigmatizing struggling readers, exposing new readers to dysfluent modeling, and failing to incorporate meaningful comprehension strategies.

How to fix it: Yes, reading out loud is necessary to teach fluency, according to Shanahan, but there are better methods. Pairing kids together to “read sections of the text aloud to each other (partner reading) and then discuss and answer your questions” is a good approach, he says, especially if teachers circulate to listen for problems.

More generally, reading strategies that model proper reading speed, pronunciation, and affect—while providing time for vocabulary review, repeated exposure to the text, and opportunities to summarize and discuss—can improve both fluency and comprehension.

A 2011 study , for example, demonstrated that combining choral reading—teachers and students read a text in unison (similar to echo reading )—with other activities like vocabulary review, teacher modeling, and follow-up discussion improved students’ decoding and fluency.

3. Talent Beats Persistence

It’s a common trap: Observers tend to rate people who appear to be naturally gifted at something more highly than those who admit they’ve worked hard to achieve success. Researchers call this the “ naturalness bias ,” and it shows up everywhere, from teachers evaluating students to bosses evaluating employees.

In reality, the opposite is more often true. “Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made,” writes psychologist and widely cited researcher of human potential K. Anders Ericsson for the Harvard Business Review . “Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching.”

Experimental studies extend the point to academics: An influential 2019 study led by psychologists Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth, for example, found that high school GPA is a better predictor than the SAT of how likely students are to complete college on time. That’s because “grades are a very good index of your self-regulation—your ability to stick with things, your ability to regulate your impulses, your ability to delay gratification and work hard instead of goofing off,” said Duckworth in a 2020 interview with Edutopia .

How to fix it: All kids—even the ones who already excel in a discipline—benefit when teachers emphasize the importance of effort, perseverance, and growth. Consider praising students for their improvement instead of their raw scores; have students read about and then discuss the idea of neural plasticity; and consider assigning reports on the mistakes and growing pains of accomplished writers, scientists, and artists.

Try to incorporate rough-draft thinking in class, and think about taking risks yourself: The renowned writing teacher Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide , regularly composes in front of his class to model his own tolerance for errors and redrafting.

4. Background Music (Always) Undermines Learning

It’s a fascinating and complex question: Can students successfully learn while background music is playing?

In some cases, it appears, background music can be a neutral to positive influence; in other scenarios, it’s clearly distracting. There are several factors at play in determining the outcomes.

A 2021 study clarifies that because music and language use some of the same neural circuitry—a finding that appears as early as infancy —“listening to lyrics of a familiar language may rely on the same cognitive resources as vocabulary learning,” and that can “lead to an overload of processing capacity and thus to an interference effect.” Other features of the music probably matter, too: Dramatic changes in a song’s rhythm, for example, or transitions from one song to the next often force the learning brain to reckon with irrelevant information. A 2018 research review confirms the general finding: Across 65 studies, background music consistently had a “small but reliably detrimental effect” on reading comprehension.

In some cases, however, music may aid learning. Neuroscience suggests that catchy melodies, for example, can boost a student’s mood—which might lead to significant positive effects on learning when motivation and concentration are paramount, a 2023 study found.

How to fix it: Basically, “music has two effects simultaneously that conflict with one another,” cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham told Edutopia in 2023 —one distracting and the other arousing.

“If you’re doing work that’s not very demanding, having music on is probably fine”—and likely to motivate students to keep going, Willingham says . In those cases, try to stick to music that’s instrumental or familiar, in order to decrease the cognitive resources needed to process it. “But if you’re doing work that’s just somewhat difficult, the distraction is probably going to make music a negative overall,” Willingham adds.

5. Grades Are Motivating

Teachers are well aware that grading, as a system, has many flaws—but at least grades motivate students to try their hardest, right? Unfortunately, the research suggests that that’s largely not the case.

“Despite the conventional wisdom in education, grades don’t motivate students to do their best work, nor do they lead to better learning or performance,” write motivation researcher Chris Hulleman and science teacher Ian Kelleher in an article for Edutopia . A 2019 research review , meanwhile, revealed that when confronted by grades, written feedback, or nothing at all—students preferred the latter two to grades, suggesting that A–F rankings might actually have a net negative impact on motivation.

In another blow to grades, a 2018 analysis of university policies like pass/fail grading or narrative evaluations concluded that “grades enhanced anxiety and avoidance of challenging courses” but didn’t improve student motivation. Providing students with specific, actionable feedback, on the other hand, “promot[ed] trust between instructors and students,” leading to greater academic ambition.

How to fix it: While grades are still mandatory in most schools—and some form of rigorous assessment remains an imperative—educators might consider ways to de-emphasize them.

Some teachers choose to drop every student’s lowest grade , for example; allow students to retake a limited number of assessments each unit; or periodically give students the discretion to turn in “their best work” from a series of related assignments.

At King Middle School, in Portland, Maine , educators delay their release of grades until the end of the unit, an approach backed by a 2021 study that found that delayed grading—handing back personalized feedback days before releasing number or letter grades—can boost student performance on future assignments by two-thirds of a letter grade.

On understanding mathematical problem-posing processes

Original Paper
Published: 16 November 2023
Volume 56 , pages 61–71, ( 2024 )

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Jinfa Cai 1 &
Benjamin Rott 2

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Problem posing engages students in generating new problems based on given situations (including mathematical expressions or diagrams) or changing (i.e., reformulating) existing problems. Problem posing has been at the forefront of discussion over the past few decades. One of the important topics studied is the process of problem posing as experienced by students and teachers. This paper focuses on problem-posing processes and models thereof. We first provide an overview of previous research and then present the results of a scoping review regarding recent research on problem-posing processes. This review covers 75 papers published between 2017 and 2022 in top mathematics education research journals. We found that some of the prior research directly attempted to examine problem-posing processes, whereas others examined task variables related to problem-posing processes. We conclude this paper by proposing a model for problem-posing processes that encompasses four phases: orientation, connection, generation, and reflection. We also provide descriptions of the four phases of the model. The paper ends with suggestions for future research related to problem-posing processes in general and the problem-posing model proposed in particular.

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Four Mathematical Miniatures on Problem Posing

Problem-Posing Research in Mathematics Education: Some Answered and Unanswered Questions

Making Mathematics Challenging Through Problem Posing in the Classroom

Papers that are part of the review are marked with an asterisk; annotated papers are marked with two asterisks..

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During the preparation of this paper, Jinfa Cai is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DRL- 2101552). Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation.

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How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications

NBC’s leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square its cable news network’s embrace of progressive politics with the company’s straight-news operation.

In a collage of images, President Biden and Comcast’s headquarters are on the left and Ronna McDaniel and an NBC camera operator are on the right. The collage is torn through the middle.

By Jim Rutenberg and Michael M. Grynbaum

MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down.

Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air.

The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its erstwhile rival CNN in the ratings and has seen viewership rise over the past year, securing second place in cable news behind the perennial leader, Fox News.

But MSNBC’s success has had unintended consequences for its parent company, NBC, an original Big Three broadcaster that still strives to appeal to a mass American audience.

NBC’s traditional political journalists have cycled between rancor and resignation that the cable network’s partisanship — a regular target of Mr. Trump — will color perceptions of their straight news reporting. Local NBC stations between the coasts have demanded, again and again, that executives in New York do more to preserve NBC’s nonpartisan brand, lest MSNBC’s blue-state bent alienate their red-state viewers.

Even Comcast, NBC’s corporate owner, which is loath to intervene in news coverage, took the rare step of conveying its concern to MSNBC’s leaders when some hosts and guests criticized Israel as the Hamas attack was unfolding on Oct. 7, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. An abrupt course correction to that coverage followed.

This account of the tensions roiling NBC and its corporate overseers is based on interviews with more than two dozen people with knowledge of the company’s inner workings, almost all of whom insisted on anonymity to share details of internal discussions.

NBC declined to make its top executives available for interviews. The chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, Cesar Conde, has said he wants his division — which encompasses MSNBC, CNBC, a digital streaming service, Telemundo and journalistic stalwarts like “Nightly News,” “Meet the Press” and “Today” — to be a big tent.

Yet his recent efforts to include more conservative voices on the airwaves generated newsroom suspicion and ultimately led to an embarrassing rebellion over the hiring of Ronna McDaniel, a former Republican Party chair who aided Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.

MSNBC hosts, for their part, view their role in the political debate as more important than ever. They dismiss the accusation that MSNBC is a “Fox News for Democrats” and say their message — that Mr. Trump’s candidacy represents a unique and clear threat to democracy — is an urgent one for the electorate to hear.

And executives inside NBC’s corporate suites at Rockefeller Center say they are confident that viewers know the differences between the company’s various news brands. Any related challenges, they argue, are of a high-class sort — because their cable channels give NBC an advantage in relevance and revenue over its original Big Three competitors, ABC and CBS, which have no cable presence.

“Our strategy is built on our distinct, complementary brands including NBC News, CNBC, NBC News Now, MSNBC and Telemundo,” the NBCUniversal News Group said in a statement. “That has driven our performance as the nation’s leading news organization with the largest reach.” (Comcast does not disclose the news division’s earnings in its reports to Wall Street.)

The tensions inside NBC are, in some ways, a microcosm of the challenges facing many traditional news organizations as the country hurtles toward a tense presidential election: how to maintain trust and present neutral, fact-based reporting in a fractionalized era when partisanship carries vast financial and cultural rewards.

But the company’s challenge is also unique. It must juggle a broadcast news operation bound by traditional standards of impartiality and a cable channel increasingly bound by the partisan preferences of an intensely loyal viewership. How NBC navigates these dueling imperatives will have important implications for Comcast, a Philadelphia-based conglomerate known for its aversion to the political spotlight.

It will also have consequences for coverage of the presidential campaign. Where MSNBC’s cable news opinion-makers sustain and galvanize the Democratic faithful, the NBC broadcast network reaches millions of the potentially persuadable voters critical to both parties, which have sought to turn NBC’s internal tensions to their own advantage.

Left, Right, Left

MSNBC has caused corporate headaches since its inception.

NBC formed the channel as a joint venture with Microsoft in 1996 with the hope that it would thrust “all the value of NBC News into the cable world,” as Tom Rogers, a former NBC executive who helped found the cable network, described it in an interview.

But critics mocked the new 24-hour channel for its informal approach to news, mixing NBC’s biggest stars with younger personalities on a set reminiscent of Central Perk on “Friends.” It was almost immediately outflanked by Fox News, which followed MSNBC to market that same year and rose to the top of the cable news ratings as the first 24-hour TV channel with an overt political appeal.

MSNBC struggled with its identity. It moved to the left ahead of the Iraq war — and later moved right by hiring new hosts like the former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough. Soon it shifted leftward again, as the host Keith Olbermann hit a nerve with his strident anti-Bush — and often anti-Fox — commentary.

But when Andrew Lack, a veteran producer, took over NBC’s news division in 2015, he decided the channel needed to tone down its partisan image. Under Mr. Lack — who oversaw MSNBC’s creation in an earlier NBC stint — the cable network bumped the Rev. Al Sharpton from the weekday schedule, hired the former Fox anchor Greta Van Susteren and added more straightforward news programs, including a daily version of “Meet the Press,” NBC’s flagship political show, with Chuck Todd.

Mr. Todd was game — but would come to believe that his MSNBC duties ultimately hurt the “Meet the Press” franchise, several people at NBC said in interviews. The daily version of the show fell increasingly out of step with MSNBC’s partisan slant even as Republicans used its association with the liberal cable network to deny interview requests from the flagship Sunday edition of “Meet the Press.”

Then, Mr. Trump’s ascent shocked the Democratic base and spiked viewership of Ms. Maddow and other left-leaning hosts, whose programs became a kind of televised safe space. MSNBC’s ratings surged .

Conde Faces the Messiness

Mr. Conde succeeded Mr. Lack in spring 2020. A Wharton-trained business executive who sits on the boards of Walmart and PepsiCo, he came up through the corporate side of news, having led a turnaround at Telemundo after serving as the president of Univision Networks. Accordingly, Mr. Conde was expected to impose a more disciplined and neater corporate sensibility to the division.

He was almost immediately confronted by the messiness he had inherited.

Within a few weeks of Mr. Conde’s ascension, Mr. Trump attacked NBC when it announced the hiring of a new contributor: Lisa Page, a former F.B.I. lawyer who became a lightning rod on the right for her role in the investigation into his campaign ties to Russia. After an initial MSNBC appearance she did not show up again.

A few months later, NBC faced criticism from the other direction when it booked Mr. Trump for a prime-time interview on the night of a presidential debate that he had boycotted. (Mr. Biden was appearing at the same time on ABC.) Ms. Maddow chastised her bosses about it on the air.

That sort of partisan tumult has often riled another important constituency for Mr. Conde: NBC’s affiliated regional stations, which the company relies on to carry its major news programs to markets throughout the country.

The stations tend to be deeply embedded — and deeply trusted — in their communities. Many of them operate in red states or counties and chafed whenever MSNBC, which Mr. Trump regularly calls “MSDNC,” drew conservative ire.

Over the years the affiliates, many of which would have been thrilled to see MSNBC’s leftward tilt abandoned entirely, increasingly urged NBC executives to better distinguish its content from the NBC journalism like “Today” and “Nightly News” that they carried on their stations.

At one point after Mr. Conde took over, executives talked about the possibility of doubling down on partisanship and stripping MSNBC of news altogether, defining it as a pure opinion channel. The company would use the new NBC News Now streaming service, started under Noah Oppenheim when he was NBC News president, for 24-hour news, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.

That idea fizzled. Mr. Conde was not prepared to entirely abandon news, but he began to better distinguish the various parts of his news division — which effectively moved MSNBC and NBC News further apart.

In the Lack era, Mr. Oppenheim of NBC News and Phil Griffin, the longtime chief of MSNBC, often worked closely as they managed a collection of stars who worked for both networks, like Mr. Todd, Craig Melvin and Hallie Jackson.

Creating more distance between the cable and broadcast outlets, Mr. Conde and Mr. Griffin’s successor, Rashida Jones, moved Mr. Todd, Ms. Jackson and Mr. Melvin off MSNBC to work exclusively at NBC News and NBC News Now. MSNBC’s daytime block of hard news shrank to six hours from eight, as the cable network extended by an hour each two opinion shows with loyal followings: “Morning Joe” featuring Mr. Scarborough and his wife Mika Brzezinski, and “Deadline: White House” with Nicolle Wallace as host.

Nothing did more to signal that MSNBC was more tightly embracing its partisan direction than Ms. Jones’s decision to hire Ms. Psaki and another Biden aide, Symone D. Sanders, straight from the White House.

It was the kind of revolving-door hiring that liberal pundits used to criticize when it happened with Fox News and the Trump administration.

It also created an awkward situation for the NBC News White House team, which was caught off guard when word that Ms. Psaki was in talks for the job leaked while she was still serving as White House press secretary.

A tense, televised confrontation followed in the White House briefing room when Kristen Welker, then NBC News’s co-chief White House correspondent, asked her future colleague: “How is it ethical to have these conversations with media outlets while you continue to have a job standing behind that podium?”

Chasing a Broad Appeal

At the same time, NBC News was going through its own changes.

Early last year, Mr. Oppenheim left his post running NBC News, and Mr. Conde split his job in three. In a jigsaw-like structure, one executive now oversaw “Today,” another “Nightly News” and NBC News Now, and a third “Meet the Press,” “Dateline” and news coverage across numerous shows and platforms.

Mr. Conde said the new setup would provide “growth opportunities,” with each show acting like its own megafranchise. “Today,” for instance, includes an e-commerce business and online sites dedicated to cooking, wellness and books.

He gave his deputies another brief: making additional efforts to ensure that news coverage reflected a wider range of political viewpoints.

Mr. Conde wanted to get Republicans back onto shows.

That was in line with an industrywide recalibration. After four years of combat between the press and Mr. Trump, media companies have sought better ways to reach Trump supporters who feel alienated from mainstream news. Television executives were also concerned that Republican elected officials were shunning their shows in favor of the congenial confines of right-wing media.

It was especially thorny for NBC, as Mr. Trump continued to yoke NBC News to MSNBC while accusing them, along with Comcast, of committing “Country Threatening Treason.”

A chance for a fresh start seemed to come last September when Ms. Welker succeeded Mr. Todd as the moderator of “Meet the Press.”

According to several people with knowledge of the internal discussions, Mr. Conde and Ms. Welker agreed that she should make booking both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden for interviews a priority. Mr. Biden declined; Mr. Trump accepted.

But when Mr. Conde said she should schedule the Trump interview for her debut episode, Ms. Welker disagreed. Questioning the mendacious former president can be a high-wire act for even the most experienced TV interviewers, and Ms. Welker did not think it was a wise way to introduce herself to viewers. She acquiesced only after coaxing from Mr. Conde and several of his deputies.

Ms. Welker worked to fact-check Mr. Trump in real time while also eliciting an admission that he ignored his own campaign lawyers when they told him there was no evidence the 2020 presidential election results were rigged. Mr. Trump steamrolled ahead with a litany of lies nonetheless. The interview was panned on social media — complete with a “#boycottmeetthepress” campaign — but was deemed a success by Mr. Conde.

Mr. Conde and Rebecca Blumenstein, a former editor at The New York Times whom Mr. Conde hired as one of his top deputies, also worked aggressively to secure a Republican primary debate in fall 2023, pitching Ms. McDaniel and other Republican officials in person.

They succeeded, but only after accepting terms that unsettled some journalists within the company. NBC agreed to include a moderator from a right-wing media company, Salem Radio, and stream the debate live on Rumble, a video site that frequently hosts pro-Nazi and other extremist content. (NBC executives have defended the decision, noting that Rumble was already the party’s official streamer and had no editorial input.)

The debate received good marks in the press. And in general, red-state affiliates felt that Mr. Conde was doing a better job of bringing balance to NBC News, according to an executive at one company that owns affiliates.

Reverberations Continue

Each network was now set on its own distinct course: MSNBC toward more partisan and progressive opinion, and NBC News toward Mr. Conde’s commitment to “presenting our audiences with a widely diverse set of viewpoints and experiences,” as he put it.

But each tripped over the limits of its approach in an election landscape already littered with ideological tripwires.

When Hamas staged its terror attack against Israel on Oct. 7, MSNBC mixed breaking news of the attacks with discussions about the historical backdrop of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The coverage reflected views on the left — and presaged the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that would soon grow in number — but it struck many others as discordant, or even offensive, given that the violence was still coming into view.

“I love this network, but I’ve got to ask: Who’s writing your scripts? Hamas?” Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League chief executive, asked two days later on “Morning Joe.”

Some of the blowback came from within.

In a call with Mr. Conde, Michael Cavanagh, the president of Comcast, who oversees NBC, shared concerns about that initial coverage, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Conde harbored the same concerns, according to a person briefed on their conversation, and he directed MSNBC to be more circumspect and to focus on facts, not opinions, in those initial days.

Five months later, Mr. Conde thought he had achieved a milestone at NBC News in his efforts to integrate right-wing perspectives into its programming. At the recommendation of Ms. Blumenstein and Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees political coverage, Mr. Conde hired Ms. McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair, as a contributor who could offer on-air commentary.

If the hiring was in service of Mr. Conde’s goal of adding balance, it came as an unwelcome surprise to NBC’s ranks of correspondents, hosts and anchors. Ms. Welker had booked Ms. McDaniel for her next episode of “Meet the Press” — as a guest, not as a colleague. In the interview, she grilled Ms. McDaniel about her role in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election result, actions that many at NBC and MSNBC viewed as disqualifying for a job there.

Mr. Todd, appearing as a guest on that day’s episode, unleashed a live, on-air denunciation of his bosses after the interview that left the control room in stunned silence. His rebellion carried over the next day on MSNBC, from “Morning Joe” up through “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Under pressure, Mr. Conde broke the deal with Ms. McDaniel, a move that only served to upset the Republicans he was trying to attract.

In the aftermath, NBC’s public stumble turned into a point of contention on the presidential campaign trail. The Republican Party said it was weighing an attempt to restrict NBC News at this summer’s convention, while Mr. Trump yet again bashed “Fake News NBC.”

Aides to Mr. Biden were also perturbed about the McDaniel hire, viewing it as part of a broader attempt by NBC News to overcompensate for MSNBC’s decidedly pro-Biden stance. In private conversations with NBC correspondents, Biden aides have argued that “Nightly News,” whose huge audience is of critical political importance to the campaign, was taking it easy on Mr. Trump and treating Mr. Biden too harshly.

Executives at NBC dismissed these complaints, saying the partisan brickbats simply come with the territory. They believe that each campaign will use anything at its disposal to pressure news organizations for more favorable coverage.

The company pointed to comments made by Mr. Conde after the McDaniel imbroglio: “We will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.” It also shared data intended to show strong performance across its cable, broadcast and online operations.

The message was clear. Regardless of any turbulence, NBC has no plans to change course.

Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg

Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016. More about Michael M. Grynbaum

'Forever chemicals' are coming into Great Lakes through air, rainfall, new study shows

A considerable amount of "forever chemicals" are making their way into the Great Lakes via the air and rain, a new study says.

In fact, the findings published in Environmental Science and Technology, show that its the primary way PFAS end up in Lake Superior, offering a stark reminder that even the lake that's considered the most pristine isn't safe from the toxic chemicals.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of thousands of compounds that are widespread and long lasting in the environment. They contaminate drinking water and build up in fish and wildlife, posing many health risks to humans, including certain kinds of cancers, reproductive harm and liver and thyroid problems.

The Great Lakes are the freshwater heart of North America. The basin is home to 10% of the U.S. population and 30% of the Canadian population, and the lakes provide drinking water for more than 40 million people.

Reducing the amount of PFAS that goes into the Great Lakes is a challenge that will require looking at every source that brings them there, said Marta Venier, an environmental chemist at Indiana University who led the research.

And the study shows that will include the air, she said.

Here are five takeaways from the study.

More: Here's what you should know about PFAS, the 'forever contaminant' being identified in more locations across Wisconsin

PFAS come in different sizes, which makes travelling easier

PFAS are used in a lot of different products, like firefighting foam, non-stick cookware, food wrappers, laundry detergents, personal care products and outdoor gear. They are popular because they make products waterproof as well as stain- and grease-resistant.

The chemicals are grouped into two different size classes: short- and long-chain. And just like it sounds, short-chain PFAS are much smaller, and because of that can easily travel long distances hitchhiking on rain and air particles.

Many long-chain PFAS were phased out and replaced with short-chain ones because it was believed that there were fewer health risks, Venier said.

As it turns out, the risks were greatly underestimated , she said.

More: ‘Forever chemicals’ are a growing problem. Here’s what we found when we tested Wisconsin’s drinking water.

Lake Ontario's water had the most PFAS

The scientists collected air and rain samples at five sites around the basin: two urban locations, Chicago and Cleveland; one rural site at Sturgeon Point, N.Y.; and two remote sites, Eagle Harbor, Mich. and Sleeping Bear Dunes, Mich. The team also collected lake water samples throughout each of the five lakes.

Combined with existing information on other sources of PFAS, like tributaries that drain into the lakes and wastewater treatment plants, the researchers were able to figure out what lake has the highest concentration of PFAS in its water and where most of the chemicals came from.

Lake Ontario had the highest concentration of PFAS in its water followed by Lakes Michigan, Erie and Huron. According to the study, the easternmost lake likely had the highest levels because it is the most urbanized and it is the lake that all the others drain into. Lake Superior had the lowest concentration of the toxic chemicals.

Most of the PFAS found in lakes were the short-chain, more mobile kind.

PFAS levels in the rain were the same in urban and remote sites

The study showed that when it comes to rain, it didn't matter whether it was Chicago or Sleeping Bear Dunes, PFAS levels were the same across all the lakes.

This is the first time we've seen that, Venier said, usually pollutant levels are higher near urban centers, like with PCBs or pesticides.

On the other hand, PFAS levels in the air samples were higher near urban sites and lower in the remote locations.

Rain, air important pathway for Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron

Overall, atmosphere delivery through rain and air is an significant pathway for PFAS making their way into the Upper Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior.

According to the study, almost all the PFAS that wind up in Lake Superior come from the atmosphere compared to wastewater treatment plants and tributaries that drain into the largest Great Lake. In Lake Michigan, roughly half comes from the air and rain.

The scientists also looked at the balance of PFAS going into the lakes versus being discharged out. According to the study, Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron are accumulating PFAS faster than they are getting rid of it.

More: Water quality issues challenge what it means to 'leave no trace' in beloved Boundary Waters

A big hurdle is a lack of information

Earlier this year, the federal government set the first national drinking water limit on certain kinds of PFAS.

While the study didn't directly test drinking water, Venier said that reducing PFAS in both the environment and drinking water will mean controlling all sources and taking a broad, multi-pronged approach.

But of the biggest challenges that remains is the lack of data on where PFAS are coming from. Venier was surprised at how little information there was on the concentration of PFAS in tributaries as well as downstream of wastewater treatment plants.

"These are data gaps that we need to fill before we can have a solid picture of all the ins and outs of PFAS in the Great Lakes," she said.

More: EPA announces enforceable standards for several common 'forever chemicals' found in U.S. drinking water

More: Almost 9 out of 10 pounds of Great Lakes beach litter each year is plastic, new report finds

Caitlin Looby is a Report for America corps member who writes about the environment and the Great Lakes. Reach her at [email protected] or follow her on X (Twitter) @caitlooby .

Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to this reporting effort at jsonline.com/RFA or by check made out to The GroundTruth Project with subject line Report for America Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Campaign. Address: The GroundTruth Project, Lockbox Services, 9450 SW Gemini Dr, PMB 46837, Beaverton, Oregon 97008-7105.

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Problem-posing education
Problem-posing education, coined by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. Freire used problem posing as an alternative to the banking model of education.
Problem Posing Education
Problem-posing education is an active learning strategy where a teacher or student poses a problem and the class collaborates to find answers. It is a progressive-democratic teaching strategy that respects students' prior knowledge, practical relevance, and co-investigation with teachers.
Paulo Freirean Ideas at the Grassroots: From Problem Posing Education
Problem-posing education enables reflective thinking and action. Freire disregarded education that helps maintain the status quo and called it 'banking education'. He describes 'banking education' as. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they ...
Toward Inquiry and Problem Posing in Teacher Education
In problem-posing education, learners engage in asking real-world problems that hold relevance for them. The essence of problem-posing education lies in the collaborative construction of knowledge between students and the teacher. Learners are not expected to conform to predetermined behaviors or function mechanically through the previous ...
Paulo Freire
Problem-posing education begins with the assumption that both teachers and students have something important to contribute to an educational situation. It builds on, but does not rest with (i.e., endorse uncritically), the knowledge and experience students bring with them to any educational setting (cf. Shor, 1980). Knowledge is regarded not as ...
A Review on Problem Posing in Teacher Education
Problem Posing as Integral to Teaching Practice. In an important article, Ball and Forzani addressed the role of teachers' follow-up questions during classroom interactions for the purposes of clarifying students' understanding of specific concepts or skills.Problem posing, or the ability to "pose strategically targeted questions," as the authors put it, is central to teaching by ...
Paulo Freire
Freire's critical pedagogy, or problem-posing education, uses a democratic approach in order to reach the democratic ideal, and, in this sense, the goal and the process are consistent. ... Dialogue is the basis for critical and problem-posing pedagogy, as opposed to banking education, where there is no discussion and only the imposition of ...
An exploration of problem posing-based activities as an ...
Problem posing education is a term coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Freire defines this term as a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation (Wallerstein 1987). Freire used a problem posing educational model as an alternative to traditional ...
Freire's problem-posing model: critical pedagogy and young learners
The paper explores how to apply Freire's problem-posing model, a critical approach to language education, with younger EFL learners in the UAE. It provides a practical guide for teachers based on the author's experience and the five phases of the model.
Teaching mathematics through problem posing: insights from ...
2.1 Defining problem posing, teaching through problem posing, and teaching cases. In this paper, we define problem posing as consisting of the following specific intellectual activities for students: (a) Students pose mathematical problems based on given problem situations that may include mathematical expressions or diagrams, and (b) students pose problems by changing (i.e., reformulating ...
PDF A Review on Problem Posing in Teacher Education
23 A Review on Problem Posing in Teacher Education. 472 problem written and presented to students to solve (e.g., Crespo, 2003 ). In this case, problem posing refers to the act of designing such a problem either during planning or in the middle of a lesson. A problem could also be a question that is verbally
PDF Paulo Freire and Peace Education
Problem-posing education relies upon dialogue and critical consciousness, democratic teacher-student relationships, the co-creation of knowledge through interaction, and a curriculum grounded in students' interests and experiences. Dialogue and Critical Consciousness . For Freire, dialogue was a key component of problem-posing education ...
Understanding Freire's Banking and Problem-Posing Concepts of Education
In problem-posing education, students and teachers seek to transform the reality together, rather than to adapt to it. Freire (2000) suggests that in order to
Education Evolution: Understanding Problem Posing Education
Problem posing education is a transformative approach to learning that emphasizes critical thinking and student engagement. It involves the generation of questions by learners, allowing them to actively participate in the learning process. Problem posing education is based on three principles: the identification of generative themes, dialogue ...
Learning to teach through mathematical problem posing: Theoretical
Although calls to integrate problem posing into school mathematics have grown over the past few decades (Cai et al., 2015), as we indicated, research that carefully examines problem posing is comparatively new in mathematics education. Up to now, many problem-posing studies have been of an exploratory nature, falling into the foundational and ...
PDF Problem-Posing in a Primary Grade Classroom
Problem Posing The state-backed education system in the United States, as elsewhere, argu-ably reproduces the status quo. It may be seen as supporting repressive forces that keep people passive. Problem-posing is an educational strategy meant to challenge those repressive forces. Problem-posing is a collective process that draws on the
University of Mary Washington Eagle Scholar
mathematics education, problem posing is becoming a recognized means of developing both mathematical thinking and creativity in students of all ages (Koichu & Kontorovich, 2013). A growing body of literature has begun to document and explore the many ways that problem posing can be utilized in the mathematics classroom.
The Freirean Approach to Adult Literacy Education
The term "problem posing" is often misunderstood, perhaps because of the negative connotations given the word "problem" and the frequent reference to problem-solving skills in education. In the Freirean approach, cultural themes in the form of open-ended problems are incorporated into materials such as pictures, comics, short stories, songs ...
Problem-Posing Research in Mathematics Education: Some ...
Problem posing has long been recognized as a critically important intellectual activity in scientific investigation. According to Einstein, the formulation of an interesting problem is often more important than its solution (Einstein & Infeld, 1938).However, whereas the case for problem solving in school mathematics has seemed relatively clear, the importance of problem posing in school ...
What are the major differences between banking and problem-posing
In Paulo Freire's view, the banking model is an oppressive and one-sided model of education, whereas the problem-posing method presents a more authentic and equitable educational exchange.
2 responses to " Freire on Freedom of Education
As an alternative, Freire proposes "problem-posing" education as an alternative to banking education. Under problem-posing, the teacher would teach as well as learn from the student. This way, the student has a more active role in her educational experience. The ability to ask questions and to come up with their own theories is the basis of ...
PDF The Effects of Problem Posing Learning Model on Students' Learning
The study found that the problem posing learning model has insignificant effect on the stu-dents' learning achievement but has a positive and significant effect of the learning model on the students' learning motivation. Further analysis showed that the learning model also has a significant and positive effect on every aspect of students ...
5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren't Backed by Research
Try to harness a student's passion for doodling by allowing them to submit academic sketches as work products. To get even more bang for your buck, ask them to annotate their drawings, or talk you through them—which will encode learning even more deeply, according to research. 2. Reading Aloud In Turn Improves Fluency.
Lo que dice la investigación sobre la enseñanza de las matemáticas a
Ha habido un mayor énfasis en la integración del planteamiento de problemas en el currículo y la instrucción, con la promesa de proporcionar potencialmente más oportunidades y de mayor calidad para que los estudian- tes aprendan matemáticas a medida que participan en actividades en las que plantean problemas.
On understanding mathematical problem-posing processes
Problem posing engages students in generating new problems based on given situations (including mathematical expressions or diagrams) or changing (i.e., reformulating) existing problems. Problem posing has been at the forefront of discussion over the past few decades. One of the important topics studied is the process of problem posing as experienced by students and teachers. This paper ...
How MSNBC's Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications
NBC's leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square its cable news network's embrace of progressive politics with the company's straight-news operation.
Air, rain bring 'forever chemicals' into the Great Lakes, study says
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of thousands of compounds that are widespread and long lasting in the environment. They contaminate drinking water and build up in fish ...

Problem Posing Education – 6 Key Characteristics

Key Characteristics of Problem-Posing Education

1. Learners are Conscious and Capable

2. Learning takes place through Problem-Solving

3. Learning must be Practical

4. Students and Teacher are Co-investigators

5. The Teacher learns from the Students

6. Learning is a Process of Becoming

Pros and Cons of Problem-Posing Education

Limitations (Disadvantages)

Problem Posing vs Banking Education

Banking Education

Problem Posing

Final Thoughts

Further Reading

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Article contents

Paulo Freire: A Brief Intellectual Biography

The Ontological, Epistemological and Ethical Basis to Freire’s Thought

Freirean Pedagogy

Criticisms, Responses, and Possibilities

Related Articles

An exploration of problem posing-based activities as an assessment tool and as an instructional strategy

Motivation and related study

Related work

Problem posing as an instructional strategy

Designing the PP-based instructional strategy

The first DDR cycle

The second DDR cycle

The third DDR cycle

Defining SQDL—the final version

Research methodology

Implementations (the PP sessions and data collection)

Data structure session (field study 2):

Data analysis

Content analysis:

Open-ended feedback from students:

Results (PP as an instructional strategy)

Knowledge unfolded

Student’s open-ended feedback

Problem posing as an assessment tool

The PP activity implementation

Learning of programming concepts

Quality of questions (difficulty levels and creativity)

Relation between the traditional assessment score and nontraditional assessment tools

Discussion and conclusion

Author information

Corresponding authors

Additional information

Authors’ contributions

Rights and permissions

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Article Contents

Freire’s problem-posing model: critical pedagogy and young learners

Phase 1: listen to student histories and language for generative words

Phase 2: selecting generative themes

Phase 3: creating the codification

Phase 4: the critical pedagogy lesson

Phase 5: discovery

The authors

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Education Evolution: Understanding Problem Posing Education

Key Takeaways:

The Principles of Problem Posing Education

Generative Themes

Implementing Problem Posing in the Classroom

Example Discussion Starters:

Benefits of Implementing Problem Posing Education

Problem Posing in Primary Grades

Liberatory Education and Problem Posing

Recognizing Strengths and Capabilities

Critical Education for Social Transformation

Embracing a Strengths-Based Approach

The Role of the Educator in Problem Posing Education

Creating a Safe and Supportive Learning Environment

Nurturing Curiosity and Collaboration

Problem Posing as an Instructional Strategy