By Jorge Knijnik and Carla Luguetti
Research demonstrates the benefits of educating for social justice in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programs. This body of research shows that social justice pedagogy enables student teachers to create a sense of social agency and community purpose in their teaching that positions them with more certainty when facing the political and professional hurdles embedded in a teaching career. The social justice perspective allows PETE educators and student teachers to work together in order to become conscious of the power structures in society that lead to social inequities. Although there are comprehensive studies on social justice and critical pedagogy in PETE, there is much to learn about how PETE educators conceptualize and practice critical pedagogy. Particularly in Brazil, there is limited research that confronts and analyses data from the myriad of emancipatory pedagogical PETE practices around the country, in order to turn those practices into a coherent body of critical narratives and shared knowledge. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore the challenges, struggles and pleasures that two PETE educators faced in understanding and enacting critical pedagogy in Brazil. A theoretical framework based on Freire’s critical pedagogy is employed to discuss the complementary narratives presented in this paper. We proclaim our hope that critical pedagogy might point to some avenues for political democratic struggles in a moment when public Education in Brazil is under severe attack promoted by the right-wing forces that currently sit on the presidential and the ministry of Education chairs.