Revisiting Knowles and Freire: Andragogy versus Pedagogy - or the Dialogic as the Essence of Socio-pedagogic Mediation

Abstract

This paper seeks to revisit basic ideas of two key-authors in the theoretical field of adult education: Malcolm Knowles (1913-1997) and Paulo Freire (1921-1997). First we analyse each one of these contributes in order to highlight the main epistemological lines and characteristics that represent a set of fundaments of educational praxis. Then we attempt to compare and find out main convergences and divergences between their proposals. We argue that these contributes bring fundaments that are pertinent for a critical and humanistic educator on the context of the liquid modernity (Bauman, 2003) we live in today in order to re-found central assumptions of social citizenship by the educational intervention and socio-pedagogical mediation.