ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Paulo Freire's use and development of conscientization; articulates the history of conscientization; the principles of the Freirean notion of this process; a detrimental—yet popular—misunderstanding of conscientization; how conscientization, as a liberating pedagogy, functions as an antidote to the detrimental pedagogies of what Freire termed “banking education”; and the vital role that conscientization plays in teaching for transformation and emancipation.
Macedo argues that Freire does not use literacy development as an end in itself, but as a process that leads to conscientization. That is, Freire's major goal was the development of an emancipatory pedagogical process that is designed to teach students, through critical literacies, how to negotiate the world in a thoughtful way that exposes and engages the relations between the oppressor and the oppressed. Its central educational objective is to awaken in the oppressed the knowledge, creativity, and constant critical reflexive capacities necessary to demystify and understand the power relations responsible for their marginalization and, through this recognition, begin a project of liberation.
Its commitment to critical reflection and transformative action makes conscientization central to critical pedagogy, which requires that the teacher performs the critical questioning inherent in conscientization in order to ensure that due consideration is given to important social, economic, and cultural contributors to social justice in teaching and learning.
