Paulo Freire and the state-of-the-art of the international journal of lifelong education. Invited article in celebration of 40 years of IJLE

ABSTRACT

This review article in celebration of the 40^th anniversary of IJLE provides an analysis of the scholarship on and about Paulo Freire in the state-of-the-art of IJLE publications between 1982–2022. The authors scanned around 4000 articles and book reviews published from 1982–2021 in the International Journal of Lifelong Education (JLE), and identified 384 articles and book reviews using the term ‘Freire’. The authors assessed them, selecting 24 of them for deeper analysis. This article is divided into three sections. The first is the introduction about the importance of Freire in the field The second section is the description and analysis of the characteristics of the articles. The third section proposes new directions for research regarding Freire’s oeuvre.

KEYWORDS:

• Freire
• Ubuntu
• decolonial
• post-colonial pedagogies
• lifelong learning
• radical adult education
• criticisms and defences of freire
• social movements
• sustainability
• global citizenship
• ecopedagogy
• bildung

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Mr. Darek Ciszek for his contributions to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Alongside the contributions of Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda. See José Gutierrez: Sociologist https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-22/participatory-action-research-par-and-colombian-peasant-reserve-zones-legacy-orlando.

2. What are the most-cited publications in the social sciences (12 May 2016) https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/12/what-are-the-most-cited-publications-in-the-social-sciences-according-to-google-scholar.

3. Cited by Carlos Alberto Torres in introduction to Paulo Freire: Politics and Education – translation by Pia Lindquist Wong. Los Angeles, California, UCLA Latin American Center Publications. 1998, page 5.

4. Any classical evaluation in Library Science of scholarly books and articles, usually includes analysis of the author, publisher, peer review editing, purpose and quality of the research and writing, nature of the content, usefulness of the resources, accuracy of the data and analysis, and contemporary currency of the material. Obviously, to conduct such analysis over 40 years and more than 4000 articles would be a Herculean effort, thus impossible to synthesise in a regular article for the journal.

5. Take one reference as an example: ‘In this process, where educators are continually readjusting their knowledge and skills and encouraging the learners to take hold of their own learning, the concept of pedagogy seems to mirror Freire’s (1994, p. 260) “utopian pedagogy”, offering hope, risky but audacious.’ See, Dabic (2008).

6. As Gurminder K Bhambra indicates: ‘The traditions of thought associated with postcolonialism and decoloniality are long-standing and diverse. Postcolonialism emerged as an intellectual movement consolidating and developing around the ideas of Edward W Said, Homi K Bhabha and Gayatri C Spivak. While much work in the area of postcolonial studies has directly addressed issues of the material, of the socio-economic, there has also been a tendency for it to remain firmly in the realm of the cultural. In contrast, the modernity/coloniality school emerged from the work of, among others, the sociologists Anibal Quijano and María Lugones, and the philosopher and semiotician, Walter D Mignolo. It was strongly linked to world-systems theory from the outset as well as to scholarly work in development and underdevelopment theory and the Frankfurt School critical social theory tradition.’ See page 115 of Bhambra (2014).

7. MOVA SP – Movimento de Alfabetização de jovens e adultos.