Freire, Critical Pedagogy, and Culture Circles

Abstract

In celebration of our 20th Anniversary as a journal, the InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies editorial team opted to put forth a call on the work of Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy, and culture circles. It’s hard not to continue to see why critical pedagogy, a praxis of nurturing critical consciousness toward humanization and society towards justice, continues to be an essential aspect of education in P-20 settings in a healthy democracy. This issue was an opportunity to showcase contemporary work and research inspired by the legacy of Paulo Freire. Humanizing education is a collective practice in partnership with students and communities, redresses structures that maintain social inequalities and hierarchies of human life, and repairs the harm they have inflicted (Freire, 1970; Paris & Alim, 2017). The call to humanize education is especially urgent given our ongoing crises in education: unceasing youth gun violence and school shootings (Schildkraut & Muschert, 2019); the defunding divestment of public instruction and closures of public schools (George, 2024); the varied emergences COVID-19 variants and other looming pandemics (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021); corresponding deterioration of working conditions and livable wages for those working for our nation’s education systems (Schmitt & deCourcy, 2022; Souto-Manning & Melvin, 2021); book bans and bans misconstruing interpretations of Critical Race Theory, and acceptance and kindness towards LGBTQIA students, teachers, and their families (Morgan, 2022); proposed and implemented legislation to dehumanize queer, trans, nonbinary, and intersex children and parents (Goldberg & Abreu, 2024); and ongoing racialized hate and terror harming Black, Asian, and other nonwhite students, teachers, and their families, among others (Gillborn, 2006; Gover et al., 2020 ; Tuchinda, 2023; Wun, 2014). The urgency of critical pedagogy remains as relevant as ever.