Trajetórias de educadoras e a pedagogia crítico-libertadora : da opção consciente às perspectivas de reinvenção

Abstract

Paulo Freire is the patron of the Brazilian Education and recognized for creating a pedagogy aimed at the humanization of subjects in the teaching-learning process. Year after year, studies and research, around the world, have demonstrated that this educator’s thinking inspires a change in practices developed on the school floor, in a horizon of emancipation. Thus, this Doctoral dissertation is based on the conscious adherence of educators to the critical-liberating pedagogy, here considered a life option that transcends formal education and professional practice, and which is expressed as an ethical commitment that contributes to the integral formation of those who adhere to it from a humanizing perspective. In order to apprehend this object, Meihy and Ribeiro’s (2021) oral history methodology was taken as a reference for recording and reflecting on the life trajectories of two educators interviewed, Ana Maria Saul and Eliete Santiago, who are nationally recognized for their performance with and based on Freire’s ideas. Oral history shows that recording and narrative work are not an individualistic task, as personal stories are always crossed and influenced by many other life stories, and these are also transformed in their intersections with the first. Faced with the challenge of capturing decisions, contradictions and inflections towards adherence to critical-liberating pedagogy, on the part of the research subjects, the aim was to answer: Which contexts and life decisions favored or hindered the development of a critical-liberating teaching praxis conscious on the part of two educators widely identified for their work with this pedagogy? In this attempt, central aspects of Freire’s pedagogy were discussed, at the same time that it was sought to identify historical landmarks and sociocultural marks in the participants’ personal experiences and professional practices, to shed light on moments that illustrate the repercussions of the thoughts of the author from Recife on the life trajectories of the educators interviewed. The set of research findings allowed to confirm the hypothesis that conscious adherence to the criticalliberating pedagogy is a life option that transcends formal education and professional practice, as it involves a noticeable expansion of the ethical-political commitment of the subjects who, through praxis, come to understand that the fight for a fairer society goes beyond the barriers of the classroom, at the same time as it includes this space.