Aula crítico-emancipatória no ensino superior: tensões, perspectivas e desafios

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the tensions, challenges and possibilities of implementing a critical-emancipatory class in higher education, taking Paulo Freire's thinking as its central theoretical axis and dialoguing with the work of authors such as Ana Mercês Bahia Bock, Maria Isabel de Almeida and Selma Garrido Pimenta. The main objective is to analyze, in light of the perceptions of pedagogy students from Baixada Santista and specialized literature, which obstacles and potentialities are posed for the implementation of pedagogical practices that overcome banking, neoliberal and meritocratic logic, favoring processes of humanization and intellectual autonomy. This is a qualitative research, epistemologically based on the phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective, which used semi-structured interviews as a data collection instrument, and the analysis was carried out based on the content analysis methodology proposed by Lawrence Bardin. The collection was composed of students of in-person pedagogy courses who had already attended at least one semester, excluding freshmen and distance education students. The interviews were organized into a priori and a posteriori categories: dialogue, emancipation, emancipatory class, role of the teacher and role of the student. The results reveal that the effective implementation of the critical-emancipatory class is strained both by structural barriers — such as overcrowded classrooms and fragmented curricula — and by internalized conceptions that reproduce the logic of content transmission. In contrast, practices based on problematizing reality, respecting students' prior knowledge and the collective construction of knowledge prove to be promising ways to develop critical and ethical subjects, in line with the concept of education as a practice of freedom. The research indicates that the transformation of the university classroom into a space of resistance in the face of the advances of capitalism in universities requires not only innovative methodologies, but also a profound change in the conception of subject, knowledge and society. It is concluded that the critical-emancipatory class, despite facing resistance, constitutes a possible and necessary horizon for teacher formation committed to social justice, democracy and human emancipation, reaffirming the relevance and urgency of Freire's legacy for higher education.