The Quiet Power of Course Design (and How It Can Either Silence or Liberate Learners)

Power, Voice, and What Learning Design Communicates, Whether We Mean It or Not

The problem with “pouring knowledge.”

Picture this.

You open a course.
The screen is packed with text.
The tone is instructional, but distant.
Every activity has one correct answer.
Your job is to read, remember, repeat.

Your experience? Not asked for.
Your judgment? Not trusted.
Your role? Sit quietly and receive.

Now imagine encountering that design every day. For months or years.

You’ve just experienced what Paulo Freire famously called the banking model of education. No interest earned. No agency required.

But this isn’t just a bad teaching style. It’s a cognitive and psychological problem, especially in correctional education.

What you’ll take from this article

By the end, you’ll have:

• A clear understanding of Paulo Freire’s core ideas
  
  

• A lens for spotting oppressive design patterns hiding in “well-intentioned” digital content
  
  

• Concrete, Edovo-specific strategies for designing learner-centered, dignity-affirming courses
  
  

• A gentle but honest gut-check for when content slips from with learners to at learners
  

The only jargon you actually need

Banking model of education

What it is:
A top-down approach where educators “deposit” information into passive learners. The learner’s job is to store it and hand it back on demand.

Why Freire (and Edovo) object:
Because it treats people like containers instead of thinkers. It ignores lived experience, discourages critical reflection, and quietly reinforces power hierarchies.

Why it matters on Edovo:
Incarcerated learners are already surrounded by systems where control outweighs voice. When courses mirror that dynamic, even unintentionally, the brain does not interpret it as “rigor.” It interprets it as threat, irrelevance, or shutdown.

Dialogical education (our preferred approach)

What it is:
Learning through dialogue, where meaning is constructed with learners, not delivered to them. Reflection, questioning, and interpretation are features, not distractions.

Why it matters in a self-paced platform:
Dialogue doesn’t require live discussion. It requires design choices: prompts that invite interpretation, questions that honor experience, and feedback that responds like a human—not a grading script.

From oppression to empowerment (in actual design terms)

Freire’s central claim is deceptively simple:

Education is never neutral.
It either reinforces existing power or challenges it.

Translated for digital course creators:

If your course assumes incarcerated learners have nothing to contribute, nothing to question, and nothing to interpret, then the design itself is doing harm, no matter how polished the layout is.

But if your course quietly communicates:
“You already know things. Let’s connect this to what you’ve lived.”
You’ve shifted the entire learning dynamic.

Same platform. Same constraints. Completely different cognitive experience.

Freire’s red flags (aka: how oppression sneaks into “good” content)

Watch for these patterns:

• Long blocks of instruction with no pause points for thinking or reflection
  
  

• Prompts that ask learners to recall information but never apply judgment
  
  

• Quizzes that feel like surveillance instead of support
  
  

• Content that ignores trauma, context, or identity
  
  

• Language that tells learners what they should think instead of asking what they notice
  
  

None of this requires bad intent. It just requires designing from the wrong vantage point.

What liberatory design looks like on Edovo

✅ Make it relational, not transactional

What this means:
Learning isn’t a transfer of information; it’s a process of meaning-making. Relational design treats the learner as a thinking partner, not a task-completer.

What it looks like on Edovo:
Instead of delivering content and moving on, you pause and invite connection:

• “Where have you seen this show up in real life?”
  
  

• “What part of this feels familiar or uncomfortable?”
  
  

These prompts don’t derail the lesson. They anchor it. They help learners integrate new ideas by connecting them to lived experience, how adults actually learn.

✅ Treat experience as data

What this means:
In liberatory design, the learner’s experience isn’t background noise. It’s a legitimate source of insight that strengthens understanding.

What it looks like on Edovo:
Even in a brand-new topic, you ask learners to notice and reflect:

• “What patterns have you observed before this lesson?”
  
  

• “Does this idea match—or challenge—what you’ve seen?”
  
  

This reduces cognitive load, improves retention, and restores agency by signaling: you already bring something valuable into this space.

✅ Design for thinking, not compliance

What this means:
The goal isn’t correct answers, it’s judgment, reflection, and decision-making. Liberatory design prioritizes how learners think, not how closely they follow instructions.

What it looks like on Edovo:
Instead of framing questions around a single “right” response, you invite evaluation:

• “What are the trade-offs here?”
  
  

• “What might someone miss if they rushed this decision?”
  
  

• “Would your approach change depending on the situation?”
  
  

When multiple answers are defensible, learners stay cognitively engaged—and learning goes deeper.

✅ Design with dignity

What this means:
Tone is not a stylistic choice. It’s a neurological one. Dignity-centered design keeps the nervous system regulated enough for learning to happen.

What it looks like on Edovo:
Before publishing, you run a simple gut-check:

• Would I want to be spoken to this way after a long, stressful day?
  
  

Language that is respectful, human, and non-punitive keeps learners oriented and open. When tone communicates safety, the brain stays online, and learning becomes possible.

What the research says now (that Freire didn’t have in 1970)

Freire named the problem. Modern learning science explains why it works.

• Critical, dialogical learning in correctional settings increases persistence, confidence, and trust (Wilson & Deutsch, 2022).
  
  

• Relevance and choice significantly improve engagement in closed digital systems (Journal of Digital Equity in Education, 2023).
  
  

• Trauma-informed design paired with reflective prompts leads to stronger transfer of learning—not avoidance (Hawkins & Lugo, 2021).
  
  

Translation: When learners feel respected, their brains stay online.

A Freire-Inspired Course Audit (quick but honest)

Ask yourself:

Voice & tone

• Does this sound like a guide, or a directive?
  
  

• Am I explaining with the learner or over them?
  
  

Dialogue

• Do learners get to interpret, question, or decide?
  
  

• Are there moments where thinking matters more than correctness?
  
  

Relevance

• Does this connect to real life, or just ideal scenarios?
  
  

• Am I honoring experience without forcing vulnerability?
  
  

Power

• Who is positioned as the expert here?
  
  

• Do learners have agency, or just instructions?
  
  

If your course leans heavily toward “Here’s what you need to know,” that’s a cue, not a failure. Adjustments make all the difference.

TL;DR: Teach like liberation matters

Paulo Freire wasn’t just critiquing education. He was naming how power shows up in learning.

On Edovo, every design choice sends a message:

• Your voice matters
  
  

• or Just get through this
  
  

Liberatory learning starts when we stop narrating someone else’s life and start building space for them to author their own understanding.

References

(Just in case you don’t believe us.)

• Brookfield, S. D. (2012). Teaching for critical thinking: Tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions. Jossey-Bass.

• Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

• hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

• Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.

• Tisdell, E. J. (2008). Spirituality and adult learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 120, 27–36.