Youth–Adult Partnerships Toward Transformative Youth Voice

The literature of youth–adult partnerships falls within four key conceptual perspectives: performative; manipulative; informative; and transformative (Domìnguez & Bertrand, 2023; Holquist, et al., 2023; Salisbury, et al., 2020). Performative youth–adult partnerships can look like adults publicly vocalizing support for youth voice, while not providing any leverage to the asymmetrical adult power and behind-the-scenes support (Domìnguez & Bertrand, 2023). This framing largely sees youth as “objects of reform” (Levin, 2000). Manipulative youth–adult partnerships can look like establishing and eventually exploiting trust of youth to advance adult-white hegemonic, and neoliberal reforms, or infantilizing and questioning the legitimacy of youth (Conner, 2016; Nelson & Charteris, 2021; Salisbury, et al., 2020). Informative youth voice limits the decision-making capacity of youth and relegates youth collectives to being, “an excellent source of data and a force for data collection and analyses” (Yonezawa & Jones, 2009, p. 206).

Transformative youth voice is grounded in being a critical, emancipatory, and antiracist movement for social change and leadership (Hipolito-Delgado, et al., 2022; Lac & Cumings Mansfield, 2018). This type of youth voice has a deliberate emphasis on marginalized youth developing sociopolitical consciousness or conscientização (Freire, 2000). Transformative youth voice actively attempts to disrupt white supremacy, systemic racism, and neoliberal reform as an act of resistance and liberation (Freire, 2000; Khalifa, 2018; Nelson & Charteris, 2021; Shamrova & Cummings, 2017; Stanton, et al., 2020). This theoretical perspective also considers youth agency and their collective resistance to oppressive systems and adults (Souto-Manning, 2014). Transformative youth voice seeks to explicitly recognize and disrupt systemic inequalities, whereas these disruptions are not the focus of performative, manipulative, and informative youth voice (Keddie, 2023). Zion (2020) provides an example of transformative student (youth) voice practices where youth and adults partner to interrogate racialized oppressive systems to create policy and social change within a school district:

These three teams [administrative council, equity council, and student voice council] meet regularly (monthly for adults and weekly for students) and engage in learning about and developing a critical consciousness by exploring their own social identities, learning about systems of power and privilege, examining data, and developing strategic action plans to improve equity in the school setting (p. 37).

Students with lived experience of multiply marginalized identities successfully instituted policies in their school district that led to student representation on the equity council, co-developing professional development with educators and staff, curriculum that centered the identities of all students, and student-led focus circles addressing discrimination (Zion, 2020). Zeldin’s example offers an important distinction with transformative student voice in contrast with other types of student voice. In transformative student voice, institutional outcomes are not the sole or core impetus for change; instead, youth-community needs and aspirations are centered. Adult school leaders (staff, administration, educators) were also deliberate and committed to sustaining youth–adult partnerships for change with students. Adults acted on the concerns and research from youth and worked as co-conspirators in solidarity to drive change, which is integral to transformative youth voice and youth–adult partnerships (Domínguez & Bertrand, 2023; Robinson & Taylor, 2007, p. 8; Zion, 2020).

Performative, Manipulative, and Informative Youth Voice: Dreams Concealed and Denied

Performative, manipulative, and informative youth voice can have overlapping elements of seeing youth as points of data triangulation to improve school accountability and reform, without disrupting the power imbalance adults hold over the lives of youth. All three tend to promote neoliberal agendas that undermine the liberatory praxis of youth voice where agency and power are actualized. These three theoretical perspectives also tend to center whiteness or to background marginalized voices (Biddle & Hungafel, 2019; Lac & Cumings Mansfield, 2018; Salisbury, et al., 2020; Sheth & Salisbury, 2022).

Seldom do youth–adult partnerships focus on the capacity building and learning adults need to do to leverage transformative, equitable partnerships that seek to disrupt white hegemony (Beattie, 2020). This may partially attribute as to why youth–adult partnerships can be manipulated by adult administrators and leaders who undermine the agency and will of youth collectives (Conner, 2016; Salisbury, et al., 2020). Salisbury et al. (2020) provide a cautionary tale of how youth–adult partnerships are co-opted by adults engaged in adultism and centering whiteness. In particular, the Youth Voice Initiative (YVI) was a partnership between high school students of color and university facilitators engaged in transformative leadership skills while serving on the student advisory council at Jefferson Public Schools (JPS). Despite the intentional consciousness-raising effort and relationship-building between the university facilitators and the youth, JPS district leadership worked to undermine and disrupt the transformative contributions of the YVI. Specifically, district leaders deliberately changed district agenda meetings without notice, denied adult facilitators access to these meetings, and coerced YVI members into filling out a survey on the attendance of “Black boys” [how the district labeled the survey] (Salisbury, et al., 2020, p. 69). JPS had subverted the rights and agency of the YVI to advance district-defined equity improvements, in which district leaders questioned youth expertise and lived experience as well as the trustworthiness of YVI adult facilitators. “The youth were simply a prop for district leaders to publicly state they engaged with youth of color, and YVI instructors served as supervisors who could ensure youth presence and participation when needed” (Salisbury, et al., 2020, p. 69). Youth and adult YVI facilitators were made to be spectacles for district leadership instead of agentic partners. The district leadership actively engaged in withholding public access to the substantial work emanating from youth of color in YVI, to maintain the status quo of centering whiteness within the district, while perpetuating a deficit approach to marginalized youth. In the words of one youth leader of color from YVI: “They didn’t even talk about oppression or anything!” (Salisbury, et al., 2020, p. 71). In this objectifying, cautionary example, the institution (JPS) was centered and prioritized over authentically engaging with youth as collaborators in their education and learning community. The well-being, agency, and dreams of these multiply marginalized youth were deliberately concealed and denied, in the interest of serving the priorities of the institution.

There is a backgrounded assumption in the literature of youth–adult partnerships that adult partners already are knowledgeable of collective consciousness raising, and are engaged in antiracist, critical praxis. This is a gap in the literature that should be addressed, specifying how adults can leverage their power within institutions to disrupt rigid adultist hierarchies and co-develop transformative change with youth (Domìnguez & Bertand, 2023; Lozenski, 2017). The focus of youth voice literature tends to emphasize or put the learning on youth developing these critical practices. This is another form of youth-deficit framing, in which youth are seen as solely responsible for developing these foundational critical lenses, whereas adults are presumed to already possess them. Adults and youth must both consider learning and unlearning to be pivotal for equitable, transformative social change. The work of the YDA program in this article included adults who were ready to teach as well as to learn from and with the interns. Within YDA, youth leaders, adult facilitators, and adult district leaders intentionally engaged within a transformative framework and critical praxis.

Data and Findings

Over the past 3 years, previous YDA cohorts had studied questions and issues pertinent to forwarding equity in their school district: increasing kids of color in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, reducing unfair (and racist) discipline policies, and learning the community’s hopes and dreams for the district. Their work was codified into the district’s strategic plan and it guided building leadership through their school improvement plans; in this district, transformative youth voice included a systemized and collaborative approach to YPAR accompanied by adult accountability embedded into district leadership for school improvement. However, interns did not have a clear picture of the research and impact that came from student leaders before them. That was particularly evident in the summer of 2023, when the YDA team was tasked with reviewing previous years’ research to determine what Gibran Rivera calls the next most eloquent step (brown, 2015). Thus, for this article, we traced themes based on how interns both experienced and learned about youth leadership in regard to YDA research: how it was denied, concealed, and discussed, and what difference that made to them.

Youth Leadership Denied. Many of the YDA members in 2023 had been in youth leadership before joining YDA. For example, students were members of a feminist club, an anti-racism club, student council, and the school newspaper. During the summer, Dr. Chhay encouraged interns to interact and inquire of other district employees, all of whom were familiar with the YDA program. She regularly asked if the students wanted access to any specific data. Initially, interns were skeptical. Interns were familiar with their own leadership efforts being limited, co-opted, or denied. They shared experiences about how they had tried to get quotes about certain issues for the school newspaper, but they had not received responses or access to their query. They tried to create change with a school-based anti-racism group, but some student-proposed actions were denied (such as raising concerns about a teacher or a desire for a teach-in about Palestine) or they did not see change as lasting. During the summer research on teacher–student relationships, Jaiden shared his appreciation that state legislation requires student evaluations for teachers, while also sharing his frustration that teachers could pick-and-choose which student participated:

I think me being a black political kid I am able to understand more deeply why things happen (this can limit me though as I get too caught up in the bigger picture to focus on the macro level and how I can help out). My recommendations followed the idea that teachers need to recognize the success that a student has--though influenced by other factors--is in large part a reflection of the relationships students have had with teachers throughout their schooling experience. So, instead of teachers being able to pick and choose, teachers should give surveys to ALL students on how they are at teaching overall and how they are doing at building connections with their students (YDA Personal Student Journal, 2023).

This practice denied most students the opportunity to offer important feedback that could guide teacher reflection and schoolwide change. Thus, there were several recommendations that the YDA team made to district leadership to improve teacher–student relationships, aiming to turn the tables on denying youth voice (see Appendix 2). One recommendation was to increase knowledge about school leaders/district administration to students; this has come to fruition with high school administrators welcoming students every morning and with a highly engaged student and family process in a superintendent search. Another recommendation was for educators to increase reflection, rather than deflection, in hearing student research or receiving student feedback. Since, to date, no teacher had asked Jaiden for a course evaluation, he wrote: “They are reflecting on themselves in the wrong light…it’s hard to make progress if you aren’t having critical reflection, actually listening to the youth.” At least for now, the feeling is that youth are still backgrounded in the process of teacher reflection and that this recommendation continues to be denied.

Typical school structures are set up for students to ask permission rather than being in charge of their own decisions or school space; denying youth voice is woven into the thick fabric of a velvety curtain on a school stage. Students are also often denied authentic collaboration with adults, including the opportunity to build trust with adults and work with adults toward action for change. They are often told to trust the process or trust the system, but not given the opportunity to build trust with the adults working in those systems. This is true in classrooms as well as in leadership. For instance, one intern wrote about the challenge of trust, “The expectations and the way the teachers view their position in teaching heavily affects the students’ abilities to learn, to want to learn, and future trust within the system that is supposed to help them and create a safe space for them” (YDA Journal, 2022). However, within a YDA summer, adult researchers pulled back the curtain to introduce youth to the varied wizards (data, policy, district employees, and school administrators), and to learn together what may have been concealed.

Youth Leadership Concealed. In schools and communities, youth leadership initiatives and contributions can be well-kept secrets. This is the case historically, such as the role of young people in the Black Panther Party and the creation of school breakfast programs, and locally in contemporary times. For instance, a local Legal Rights Center and their youth advocates worked to ban certain restrictive holds by school resource officers (SROs). Even though the change in SRO holds was widely advertised, the large role of youth advocates in the process was rarely acknowledged. In the YDA summer of 2023, youth data interns worked to understand what change had developed in their school district connected to past YDA efforts. With adult collaborators in the program, they outwardly discussed their struggles in “seeing results of school change efforts.” They asked, “Are we actually standing on the results of past years’ work?” or was it “just the natural evolution of education?” (course journal, 7/23). Without a deeper knowledge of the system, they initially believed that improvement may happen without the strategy and collaboration necessary. Through the summer of 2023, YDA team members understood past years’ questions, methods, and research, but it was not as clear to them what had been done or what had changed due to the research. So, adults paused to share stories about the research and its impact. First, we reviewed data from a previous YDA group who had focused on a question about a lack of students of color in advanced classes. A theme was exposed by high schoolers sharing embodied memories of not being in “GT” (gifted/talented) classes as a kid. They determined that the root cause of tracked classes did not begin at the high school; based on the data they collected, it was connected to feelings of adequacy and intelligence based on elementary school tracking. Next, Dr Chhay told a story about her bi-racial Black and Asian child, new to kindergarten in the district; he would never know school with a predictably racialized gifted and talented program. After YDA recommendations, the district had changed the design of the program to “talent development,” giving increased access and opportunities to all its students, not a select few based on limited access to certain test scores, parent phone calls, and teacher recommendations. However, the youth contribution and leverage of this change in talent development, or in other school improvement opportunities, was not widely known:

YDA isn’t discussed among students because they don’t know it… I think knowing you can have the opportunity to work alongside them [administrators] would be a different change of pace, maybe bring some transparency (Interview 3, 2024).

Being able to leverage communication and connections with adults and young people is both instrumental to building social capital (Yosso, 2005) and critical to having community-based feedback loops that recognize the contributions of youth.

Another form of concealment is that data can stay hidden too, if not analyzed with young people most impacted by the data. When the 2023 team pursued their research question about teacher–student relationships in 2023, they disaggregated both qualitative and quantitative data by race, language, and ethnicity; they noticed that teachers were underserving their students of color. No student wants to do poorly, so something was going on in the curriculum or teaching methods, or more likely both. When this data is concealed, so is the possibility of how youth can collectively work—including in partnership with adults—to problem-solve failing grades and other issues in school. And, moreover, students want to be engaged in change: “I also hope there’s more chances for student voice to be utilized in policy making and any other sort of big decision making that goes on in our district, outside of what’s currently available” (YDA Journal, 2022). YDA was a starting point for interns to realize the potential in their voice and agency:

I think youth leadership and advocacy is super important, especially in this day and age. I think young people are often deemed less responsible or less qualified to do things in positions of leadership. So, by having known in those instances [youth in leadership] demonstrates their capability… It emphasizes voice and that’s really important… I had never really felt like I was in a position to do so but now that I’ve been able to do it once, I feel more confident stepping up when I get the chance (Interview 2, 2024).

Possibilities in youth research are also concealed from adult educators. For instance, the Statistical Report of AmeriCorps YPAR Grant 2022 Survey Data, surveyed 194 adult educators and staff about YPAR and student-centered approaches to teaching. Adults were surveyed in schools or districts where there was funding and adult support for a YPAR team. In this survey, 72% of white respondents reported that they were not familiar with YPAR and 91.5% of white respondents had never taught a YPAR course or served on a YPAR team (Bell, et al., 2023). 63% of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) respondents reported not being knowledgeable with YPAR, and 70% had never taught a YPAR course or served on a YPAR team (Bell, et al., 2023). White respondents were significantly less likely to be knowledgeable and have experience with YPAR than their BIPOC colleagues, yet most respondents, who are either educators, school administrators, or educational staff, have had limited or no experience with YPAR, even though their districts received YPAR funding and support. Educators will miss opportunities to meaningfully partner with and learn from students if they are not grounded in a framework that recognizes the expertise and agency of youth. After YDA presented to the school leadership teams, one student wrote:

It was interesting to see how quickly it was after our presentation for principals or department heads to ask for us do more work, wanting a consult on their process. I don’t think we got any questions about our presentation at the end, if there were any unanswered points people had in regard to our findings or recommendations. Something about the combination of those two, wanting us to keep doing more work, and a lack of things to question or add, makes me feel doubtful that we’ll see the recommendations followed through with (YDA Personal Student Journal, 2023).

This student’s analysis was sharp. He understood that adults in power may continue to conceal YDA recommendations.

YPAR projects can also be muted through a lack of promoting youth contributions by school leaders, teachers, and students (Ozer, et al., 2013). As interns shared, YDA efforts have been somewhat concealed, which limits how both students and educators see youth potential. When youth leadership is revealed, including through youth research, it can lead to a transformative shift in how youth act as agents of change.

Youth Leadership Discussed. When youth leadership is discussed, what do we know? Almost 15% of the 21,856 11th-grade students who responded to a state-wide survey said they participated in leadership activities from 1 to 5 days a week (Minnesota Department of Education, 2022). For those who are in leadership, they often have a different understanding of the system than those who are not. There is a certain level of social capital that brings students to activities, including in leadership, and YDA was no different. The difference was the intentional invitation to center students of color and those historically marginalized from school and leadership opportunities, a core commitment of YPAR. The discussion of being a youth researcher as a leadership opportunity started with its recruitment and continued after the internship.

Jaiden: Before being in YDA, I learned about it through a presentation Dr Chhay gave in my European History class, in which she shared her racial autobiography (something I had also made in my Revisiting Ethnicity and Culture class). She talked about how growing up as a Cambodian refugee shaped her into who she is today and drives the rest of her life. I saw similarities myself, how personal experiences have extensive impacts, how they drive a person’s life, and most of all, how they drive a person’s thinking. But one of the most impactful parts was the fact that she’s a district administrator; someone from the district was directly communicating with me. She also talked passionately about the work that youth can do (something which I have never seen adults discuss with youth before). She talked about how they could have an impactful change, how they could change the way things were run; she said it as if she had seen it firsthand, which she had. Then she showed pictures of past cohorts; I saw myself in the students. I saw kids who looked like me, and some of whom I knew personally. When I asked them about the process, they told me I should sign up and I wouldn’t regret it. So, I trusted my peers and I did.

Abby: One thing we emphasized this summer as co-researchers was that data was not just facts and statistics, but it included experiences, interviews, and stories. It took some convincing that stories too were data, that our lived experiences were relevant, and that “being objective or neutral” (course journal), as some students initially aimed to be, was neither possible nor the goal. We discussed what research is and who researchers are. We watched the video about Mr Researchy (Morris Justice Project, 2011) and discussed our own assumptions about who can do research. Throughout the summer, young people, near-peer college graduates, and other adults were positioned as experts in their own experience. We entered the research experience together with authentic questions, a systematic approach to analysis, and we wrestled with the most effective and strategic ways to put our research together to drive recommendations into local actions. To build those relationships, we shared kinship, stories, and laughter, which built trust:

Personally knowing that people had experienced similar things or at least saw things similarly, were both helpful in establishing those relationships…that was a cool relationship too, to see people so young [recent college graduates] work alongside you guys [adult collaborators] as well, made the situation more comfortable. And that you guys were so open about certain topics, both just instantly made the situation more comfortable (Interview 3, 2023).

Being honest, valuing personal experiences, and modeling vulnerability and collaboration were part of showing how leadership, through research and mentorship, could look.

Abby and Jaiden: Together, we read articles that made it feel like our own experience (Valenzuela, 1999; Warren & Marciano, 2018). We analyzed previously conducted research from our school district, impressed by the work of other high schoolers and district staff as well, and we designed our own action research (staff surveys and interviews with elementary and middle school students). After spending the summer as researchers on the topic of teacher–student relationships, we understood more about literature, critical theory, and our experience within it; we knew district and street-level data; we overheard school or district employees talking about the time we had spent together and how deeply we knew the data.

From the YDA process, team members reflected on their deeper understanding of systems, patterns, and strategies toward change:

It was nice to be able to have an insider’s look of how an education system works and how administrators go about handling it or trying to fix it or seeing what they can do better. And using student voices I think is a great way of doing that. (Interview 1, 2024)

I think I better understand how a system works now. And I think how I go about my daily life and how I recognize the patterns more than I used to, and I’m more aware of the reasonings but then how things work now that I was beforehand, but more appreciative…but most importantly, it was a way for me to kind of create change within the system, while still being a student. (Interview 2, 2024)

When this summer’s youth intern group challenged, “What has actually changed?,” their honest and pressing question prompted the adult facilitators to dig deeper into making the process more transparent regarding youth recommendations and subsequent actions (see Figure 1). These experiences did not just live in the summer months; knowledge creation by the YDA team continued to be discussed with administrators in school leadership teams and University professors throughout the school year.

Figure 1

School District Actions from YDA Recommendations (from the first 2 years).

Ongoingly, the team saw how YDA recommendations were tied to the school district’s strategic planning and school improvement plans.

Jaiden: The notion of having direct power in a way that would not just have an impact on me, but on my peers was on par with nothing I had ever experienced. YDA is not just an aesthetic showcase of power for young people; it is power for young people. The problem that follows it is enforcing it. We see this as something that is not exclusive to youth change but change generally, as any type of change is a threat to the status quo, including with the people in power who benefit from the system.

There were transformative benefits to YDA team members and to the district, as the team overtly discussed research, critical theory, their own stories, and the past impact of youth in a summer-long youth–adult research partnership.

For Adult Leaders

Educators can leverage their power with youth to build transformative partnerships that drive just, equitable change. Adult leaders acting as co-conspirators can struggle alongside and broadcast the insightful work youth create, while offering support and mitigating institutional barriers (Domínguez & Bertrand, 2023). Creating intentional, accessible ways of historicizing the social change youth are engaged in is pertinent to expanding knowledge of youth leadership, while humanizing youth as integral members of the community. Most educators are not familiar with YPAR, and this hinders the capacity to engage in transformative youth–adult partnerships. It is imperative for adult leaders to be cognizant of how youth, including Indigenous youth and youth of color, can be systematically devalued, and to actively leverage and share power toward community changemaking. Under-discussed in this article are steps that YPAR teams can plan toward social action. In this YDA model, adults take up a role to bring youth recommendations to school action. Nonetheless, it may also take multiple strategies to push change forward, and adults should also be prepared to work alongside young people as they strategize in their own creative ways toward change.

From and for Youth

The Youth Data Analyst Intern Program team learned throughout the summer that progress does not happen overnight. They gleaned this lesson in a multitude of ways, but the most prominent was when past years’ efforts were revealed. They learned of recommendations to increase BIPOC enrollment in Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and honors classes; before that, they knew nothing about it. They learned of efforts to address disparaging discipline data; before that, they knew nothing about it. They learned of efforts to see if the district was living up to the communities’ hopes and dreams; before that, they knew nothing about it. They knew nothing, not because nothing had happened (though that was the case sometimes), but because the progress was slow in its implementation, and it was not transparent to youth. Thus, the sustained results of their work might not be seen in their own high school career. Nonetheless, they recognized that they are currently living in the results of former youth advocates’ work, either through YDA or other youth-driven initiatives within the district. Just as past work by youth advocates has affected their lives for the better, they had a reckoning of their integral and driving force—an active hope and power—for future change. As this youth research team was positioned as leaders, they not only impacted change in the schools, but they also changed themselves. The lessons that YDA team members learned varied, but they all corresponded to the same thought: the work they do today will likely not be shown tomorrow, but rather long after they are gone.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paulo Freire, 1970/2000

excerpts from CHAPTER 2 (p. 72-81, 2000)

1. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology) of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence—but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.

2. The banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:

   • (a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

   • (b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

   • (c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

   • (d) the teacher talks and the students listen—meekly;

   • (e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

   • (f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;

   • (g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;

   • (h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;

   • (i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;

   • (j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

3. The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their “humanitarianism” to preserve a profitable situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality but always seeks out the ties which link one point to another and one problem to another.

4. Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the healthy society that they have “forsaken.”

5. The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rabbit. The “humanism” of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human.

6. Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.

   …

7. Indeed, problem-posing education, which breaks with the vertical patterns characteristic of banking education, can fulfill its function as the practice of freedom only if it can overcome the above contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.

8. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on “authority” are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the teacher.

9. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students…