When does it work? Freire’s pedagogy in context

Paulo Freire has, for years, been regarded as one of the key figures in the area of transformative education intended to generate radically democratic social relations. This paper is concerned with the following question: to what extent and under what circumstances can Freire's pedagogical ideas be successful in contributing to a process of social transformation? In this paper, I shall argue that, whatever the context in which Freire's pedagogy is carried out, there are always forces, often generated by the liberatory practices themselves, that militate against the kind of social relations Freire's pedagogy is intended to promote. The central argument is that the tension between liberation and domestication, two of Freire's preferred terms (Freire, 1972a), is a perpetual one, relevant to all contexts, and that, therefore, the struggle which necessitates transformative adult educational practices remains an ongoing one.