This workshop introduces the principles of the Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire applied to the 21st century education and classroom. Its main objective is to discuss and reflect on Freire´s educational legacy, mainly his contemporary philosophy. For that, the discussions proposed aim at promoting an intercultural dialogue and reflection among the participants, mostly teachers, educators and teacher educators, from diverse areas of knowledge and from several cultural and educational contexts in the U.S and Latin America. The interactions will be synchronous along the event and will be based on some publications in which Freire revisited a few of his theoretical positionings. Special attention will be given to perspectives on teaching and teachers presented in the book Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (1998). Also, participants will have the opportunity to better understand some of the main Freirean concepts, such as palavra-mundo, banking education and pedagogical praxis, and relate them to their educational contexts. The event will be held in English.
About the Speaker
Dr. Walesko is an OSU fall term visiting scholar sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. She is an assistant professor teaching Methodology and Teaching Practicum at Letras (Languages) at the School of Education at Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Brazil, where she also works as a researcher, advisor and professor for the graduate Professional M.A for Basic School teachers. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. Her research “Internationalization and Linguistic Critical Education: re/constructing identities and teaching practices” aims at investigating the impacts of continued, intercultural and critical linguistic education on language teachers’ construction and reconstruction of their professional identities, in order to modify (or not) their discourse and agency in the classroom. The research has as its mainly theoretical basis Paulo Freire's contemporary perspectives (1990s) for reflections on teacher education. Prof. Angela Walesko is the coordinator of the Teachers across Borders (TaB) UFPR university outreach project, which promotes dialogic and collaborative exchanges between in-service and pre-service teachers from different theoretical backgrounds and contexts. Her research interests focus on teacher education, touching the following themes: internationalization, interculturality, translanguaging, decoloniality, critical literacy, new literacies, multiliteracies and collaborative teaching practices, such as co-teaching and coaching. Prof. Angela Walesko has worked as a teacher in Basic Education in the municipal, state and private schools in Brazil for 24 years, as English textbooks writer, editor and reviewer at local Publishers for 8 years and as a pedagogical coordinator for the English project at the Science without Borders Brazilian federal education program from 2014 to 2017. She has published articles and book chapters on co-teaching and coaching, communities of practice, translanguaging, the myth of the native speaker and teaching practices. She is the author of “Listening comprehension in English Language” (2011) and one of the organizers of the books “Formação Colaborativa Intercultural de professor@s” (2022) and “Vida Universitária em Diálogo” (2021). She is a member of the Research Group on Linguistic Education (GPELIN) at UFPR and of the Center for Literacy and Textbook Studies (NELLID) at UFRJ, in Brazil.
