CONCEPT
Problem-Posing Education
Education organized around genuine investigation of reality — teacher and student as co-learners examining problems drawn from lived experience.
Problem-posing education is Freire's alternative to the banking model. The educator does not arrive with predetermined curriculum but with commitment to investigating reality alongside learners. Investigation begins with generative themes — problems, contradictions, questions arising from learners' own experience that, when critically examined, reveal structures shaping that experience. Teacher and student investigate together, each bringing different perspectives, each learning from the other, each contributing to shared understanding neither could achieve alone. The process is dialogical, problem-centered, and organized around praxis. When learning to build software occurs through AI-assisted engagement with real problems the learner faces, the process resembles problem-posing: iterative, exploratory, producing understanding through action rather than absorption. The learner does not receive deposits about how AI works — she uses it to address genuine need and discovers its capabilities and limits through engagement.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Problem-posing requires specific conditions that banking education does not. The educator must possess humility — the acknowledgment that she does not possess the whole truth and that learners' perspectives will reveal dimensions of reality she cannot see