Personalized learning is not emancipatory learning: how Paulo Freire’s discourse is being appropriated by the educational technology industry

Abstract

In this article, we discuss two possible futures for educational technologies and personalized learning. One is dominated by corporate products of programmed instruction in which “personalization” is strictly limited to the pace of consumption of the materials, with students unable to have any choice in terms of content or approaches. On the other end of the spectrum, maker education offers a different way to use technology, enabling students novel forms of expression and of agentic participation in today’s world. We conclude by warning about the appropriation of the discourse of progressive education by producers of systems of programmed instruction, and pointing out that there is, at the intersection of maker education and Freirean approches, a more promising future for educational technologies.