guiding principles

6 Core Tenets of Liberatory Pedagogy and Popular Education

1. Raising critical consciousness: developing students' consciousness around social, political, and economic systems that maintain social difference and injustice (Freire and Macedo, 1987)

2. Utilizing generative themes: grounding material and curriculum to be reflective of current oppressive systems and injustices, in order to provoke students to examine their own lived experiences (Freire, 1993)

3. Engaging in problem-posing: identifying the root cause(s) of an issue and generating solutions to disrupt it (Freire, 1993)

4. Emphasizing praxis: iterative practice of reflection and action (Freire, 1993)

5. Embracing dialogue: engaging in the humanizing process of sharing lived experiences in which the knowledge of others is treated as valid, and exploring ideas on how to transform oneself and the world (Freire, 1993)

6. Practicing love and becoming in the learning space: an eagerness to meet people where they are with an understanding that people are on a constant learning journey (hooks, 2000)

Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

"Like Universal Design for Learning (UDL), trauma-informed pedagogy aims to go beyond accommodations to plan ahead for the possibility—and indeed, likelihood—of teaching students who have experienced trauma. [Trauma-informed pedagogy] aims to address 'barriers resulting from the impacts of traumatic human experiences' in order to 'create classroom communities that promote student wellbeing and learning.' Trauma-informed pedagogy, in short, is a key component of fostering an equitable classroom." (Barnard College, 2024). 

#DemocratizeKnowledge | #DemocratizeData

As we have witnessed in a variety of industries, this is a movement to shift away from a centralized higher education framework (top-down) to a world where most learning happens beyond the boundaries of traditional institutions (bottom-up). This includes a reframing of whose expertise is typically valued and who gets to produce knowledge in traditional university spaces, toward uplifting diverse types of expertise and knowledge production and centering lived experience.

#DecentralizeHigherEd | #DecentralizeExpertise

This is the acquisition and spread of knowledge and data amongst a wider part of the population, not just privileged elites such as researchers and academics. This means that we must make spaces and information that are traditionally inaccessible to some, more accessible for all.