The Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a Barrier to the Effective Implementation of the Learner-centered Education

Abstract

Abstract: The use of learner-centered education has become almost inevitable to reflect and address today’s increasingly changing societal needs. This entails not only the introduction of carefully-designed, contemporary, relevant, and flexible curriculums to build disciplined pragmatic minds, but it requires also a collaborative effort between progressive teachers and active learners to create efficient learning experiences that enable students to use their unlimited potentials to analyze thoughtfully and reflect upon these experiences. As such, students are empowered to draw new objective conclusions that will be incorporated into their pre-existing experiences to construct knowledge by themselves rather than passively receive information as empty vessels that must be filled by teachers, the only direct knowledge-transmitters suggested by the traditional teacher-centered education. To fulfill this aim, power and responsibilities in the class must be shared between teachers and students in an interactive environment that should respect basic principles of democracy and freedom, in which students are considered as a promising pivotal part in the learning process. In another word, even the most elaborate learner-centered syllabi and strategies may drastically fail if teachers lack interest in power sharing with their students in the class, leading to exercising “the Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. This paper stresses the importance of balanced teacher-students powers for a successful implementation of the learner-centered education, suggesting at the end some effective means to empower learners, based on the pedagogical perspectives of Paulo Freire. Keywords: Student-centred education, pedagogy of the oppressed, Paulo Freire, active learning, power sharing, relational pedagogy