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The new issue of the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning marks the centenary of Paulo Freire’s birth – a significant anniversary for scholars of education, as well as for many practitioners and activists, and indeed for all of those working in and around education who see their work as in some way connected to a broader social purpose.
Freire’s ideas about freedom and liberation, and the relation between reflection and action in education, continue to inspire and provoke 50 years on from the publication of his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Education that enables people to engage critically with the world around them and that brings with it the prospect of social change is desperately needed right now.
A number of the articles in the issue address these or related themes, and some invoke Freire directly. The six contributions to this issue focus, respectively, on pedagogies for peacebuilding in higher education (this article is authored by a team from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Colombia and the United Kingdom); school–community interventions to curb learner dropout in South Africa; key factors influencing the maintenance of adult learners’ literacy skills levels in Cambodia; lifelong learning and the 30th anniversary Human Development Report; the relationship between teachers’ teaching beliefs and their affinity for lifelong learning in Turkey; and non-formal education and economic growth in Nigeria.
As the Editor notes in his introduction to this issue, ‘As we strive to find a way through our problems and shape a future fit for future generations, Freire’s voice is still needed. We need to talk about freedom and struggle, hope and justice, and Freire gives us a language in which to do it.’
Access the new issue of the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning
