LAUSR

How can Paolo Freire’s valuable insights about teaching and learning be retained in interactive learning environments, the focus of this journal, as education becomes increasingly marketized? Freire’s classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Pedagogia do Oprimido) (1970) is the third most cited book in the social sciences according to research conducted at the London School of Economics, which placed it above Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Vygotsky’s Mind in Society and the two Michaels favoured by schools of sociology and business (respectively) Foucault and Porter (Green, 2016). Freire’s influence is widely acknowledged in a range of fields related to teaching and learning. But in looking through the archives of Interactive Learning Environments, it seems that there are only two articles which cite his work (Kang & Zhang, 2020; Prieto et al., 2016). This editorial aims to suggest three concepts from Freire’s thinking which can contribute to howwe evaluate interactive learning systems: embracing critical pedagogy, identifying the risks of a culture of silence, and acknowledging the shortcomings of the banking model of education. Freire developed these ideas at a time of enormous social changes, working to raise literacy level among workers in his native Brazil until he was forced to flee. His ideas about teaching and learning reflected the vast social disparity he saw, and the crucial role education could play in improving life chances. In exile from Brazil the value of his insights were recognised abroad. He was appointed a professorship at Harvard University, and the World Council of Churches asked him to act as their special education advisor. Decades later, when it was politically safe for him to return to Brazil he became the Secretary of Education in the megacity of Sao Paulo. But his contributions took place in a world where online learning was not a core part of how most people accessed learning and teaching. Here we advocate that Paolo Freire’s insights offer important considerations as the role of interactive learning environments has become much more widespread as a result of the discontinuity of the coronavirus pandemic (Rospigliosi, 2020).