Education for Emancipation: What It Means to Be Educated (Part 2)

Joseph Tyler (Doctoral Researcher)

A teacher engages with students during an interactive classroom session, fostering a collaborative learning environment.

In the first article, we explored what it means to be educated in an emancipatory sense, arguing that understanding, rather than performance, compliance, or motivation alone, is what enables independence, judgement, and agency. Building on those foundations, this article turns its attention to what that looks like in practice, examining critical education, performance cultures, and the everyday design choices that either support or undermine emancipatory learning.

Becoming Critically Educated -What It Means to Be Educated

To become critically educated is not simply to acquire a critical attitude, nor to adopt a particular political position. Rather, it reflects a form of educational maturity, the capacity to understand how knowledge, systems, and practices operate, and to exercise judgement within them. In this sense, critical education involves seeing systems rather than isolated tasks, understanding causes rather than merely outcomes, and recognising the assumptions and limitations that underpin knowledge claims and institutional practices.

Seeing systems rather than tasks requires learners to move beyond procedural completion towards an understanding of how individual actions fit within wider structures. In education, this might involve recognising how assessment criteria relate to learning outcomes, how curricula are sequenced, or how institutional expectations shape practice. Such systemic awareness enables learners to act with greater intentionality, rather than simply responding to immediate demands. Research on expert performance suggests that this ability to perceive underlying structures is a key distinction between novice and expert thinking (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000).

Understanding causes rather than outcomes further deepens critical education. Outcomes, such as grades, performance indicators, or behavioural data, provide limited insight unless learners can interpret the processes that produced them. A critically educated learner asks why an outcome occurred, what factors influenced it, and how different choices might lead to different results. This causal reasoning is central to problem-solving and transfer, allowing learners to adapt their knowledge to new situations rather than reproducing familiar responses (Perkins, 1992).

Recognising assumptions and limitations is equally important. All knowledge is produced within particular contexts, shaped by methodological choices, cultural norms, and theoretical frameworks. Critical education therefore involves understanding not only what is known, but how it is known, and where its boundaries lie. This aligns with calls for epistemic humility in education, where learners are encouraged to question sources, evaluate evidence, and acknowledge uncertainty rather than treating knowledge as fixed or unquestionable (Biesta, 2010).

Positioning criticality as educational maturity helps to distinguish it from political indoctrination. Critical thinking, in this sense, is not about telling learners what to think, but about developing their capacity to think well. This capacity underpins professional judgement, particularly in fields where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty or competing priorities. Moreover, it supports lifelong learning by enabling individuals to update their understanding as contexts change and new evidence emerges. A critically educated learner is therefore better equipped not only for immediate success, but for sustained engagement and responsible decision-making across their personal and professional lives.

Education in a Performance Culture

Contemporary education operates within a pervasive performance culture, shaped by accountability systems that emphasise measurement, comparison, and demonstrable outcomes. While accountability can serve important functions, such as transparency and equity, it can also distort the purpose of education when metrics become proxies for learning itself. In such contexts, what is easily measured often comes to stand in for what is educationally valuable, narrowing both curriculum and pedagogy (Biesta, 2010).

One significant tension within performance-driven systems is that between coverage and coherence. Pressure to “get through” content can lead to curricula that prioritise breadth over depth, resulting in fragmented learning experiences. When coherence is sacrificed, learners may encounter large volumes of information without developing a clear sense of how ideas connect or why they matter. Research suggests that learning is more durable and transferable when knowledge is organised coherently around key concepts and principles rather than presented as isolated topics (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000). Excessive emphasis on coverage risks undermining this coherence.

A second tension arises between metrics and meaning. Assessment scores, progress measures, and performance indicators offer simplified representations of complex learning processes. While such metrics can inform decision-making, they rarely capture understanding, judgement, or intellectual independence. As a result, educators may feel compelled to design learning experiences that maximise measurable outcomes rather than meaningful engagement. This can encourage strategic learning behaviours, where learners focus on what will be assessed rather than on making sense of the subject matter (Wiliam, 2011).

The tension between speed and depth further compounds these challenges. Fast-paced curricula and high-stakes assessment schedules often reward rapid recall and procedural fluency, leaving limited space for reflection, exploration, or consolidation. However, cognitive research indicates that deep learning requires time for practice, feedback, and integration (Bjork and Bjork, 2011). When speed is prioritised, learners may appear successful in the short term but lack the depth of understanding needed for transfer and long-term retention.

Together, these tensions create a significant risk: education becomes designed for appearance rather than understanding. Learners may perform convincingly under familiar conditions, while remaining ill-equipped to apply their learning in new or complex situations. In such systems, success is often fragile, dependent on tightly controlled conditions rather than robust understanding. An emancipatory approach to education therefore requires educators to critically examine how performance pressures shape design decisions, and to resist practices that privilege visibility over substance.

What Emancipatory Practice Looks Like

If education is to function as a means of emancipation, this purpose must be visible not only in theory but in everyday teaching and assessment practices. Emancipatory education is enacted through design choices that prioritise understanding, agency, and future action over compliance and performance. These choices are often subtle, embedded in routine decisions about assessment timing, curriculum structure, and feedback practices, yet their cumulative impact is significant.

One defining feature of emancipatory practice is the use of diagnostic assessment before summative judgement. Diagnostic approaches seek to identify what learners already know, misunderstand, or partially understand before formal evaluation takes place. This allows teaching to respond to learners’ actual starting points rather than assumed readiness. Research consistently shows that effective diagnosis of prior knowledge and misconceptions supports more equitable learning outcomes, as it reduces the likelihood that gaps will be mistaken for lack of ability (Ausubel, 1968; Black and Wiliam, 1998). In emancipatory practice, assessment information is used to guide teaching and support learning, not to label or rank learners prematurely.

Curriculum sequencing is another critical design choice. Curricula designed for understanding attend carefully to the order in which concepts are introduced, ensuring that foundational knowledge is secured before learners are expected to engage with abstraction or application. Coherent sequencing reduces cognitive overload and supports the gradual development of conceptual understanding (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000). When sequencing is neglected in favour of coverage, learners who lack prior knowledge are disproportionately disadvantaged, reinforcing dependency rather than building capacity.

Feedback plays a central role in emancipatory education when it is oriented towards future action rather than retrospective judgement. Feedback that merely justifies a grade offers limited educational value. In contrast, feedback that identifies specific areas for development and links them explicitly to future tasks supports learner agency and self-regulation (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Such feedback positions learners as active participants in their own improvement, capable of responding, adapting, and progressing rather than passively receiving evaluation.

Reframing assessment as information rather than punishment further supports emancipation. When assessment is perceived as a threat or a judgement of worth, learners are more likely to adopt defensive or strategic approaches to learning. Conversely, when assessment data are treated as informative, providing insight into what has been understood and what requires further work, learners are more likely to engage constructively with feedback and challenge (Wiliam, 2011). This shift requires transparency about purpose and criteria, reinforcing trust and shared responsibility for learning.

Crucially, emancipatory education does not depend on radical reforms or dramatic interventions. It is enacted through everyday design choices: how assessments are framed, how curricula are structured, how feedback is given, and how success is defined. By attending to these decisions with intentionality, educators can create learning environments that support understanding, independence, and the gradual transfer of responsibility from teacher to learner. Emancipation, in this sense, is not an abstract ideal but a practical outcome of thoughtful educational design.

When Education Falls Short

When education prioritises performance over understanding, the consequences are often subtle at first but significant over time. Learners may continue to achieve acceptable grades, progress through programmes, and meet institutional benchmarks, yet experience a growing sense that their learning lacks depth or relevance. This misalignment between outward success and inward capability can undermine both motivation and confidence, revealing the limitations of education designed primarily for measurable outcomes.

One common consequence is learner disengagement. While performance-oriented systems can initially motivate learners through extrinsic rewards such as grades or qualifications, this motivation is often fragile. When learning is reduced to task completion or assessment optimisation, learners may struggle to find intrinsic value or meaning in their studies. Research on student engagement suggests that sustained motivation is closely linked to perceptions of relevance, autonomy, and understanding, factors that are diminished when education emphasises performance alone (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Over time, disengagement may manifest as surface participation, strategic compliance, or withdrawal from learning altogether.

Another consequence is dependency on templates, models, and exemplars. In performance-driven environments, learners often learn to rely on prescribed structures that signal what assessors are looking for. While models can be useful scaffolds, overreliance limits learners’ ability to make independent judgements. Learners may become adept at reproducing familiar formats while struggling to adapt when expectations shift or when guidance is reduced. This dependency reflects a lack of conceptual understanding rather than a lack of effort, and it leaves learners ill-prepared for contexts where problems are ill-defined or solutions are not pre-specified (Perkins, 1992).

A further indicator that education has fallen short is the inability to transfer learning. Transfer, the application of knowledge and skills to new situations, is widely regarded as a central goal of education, yet it remains elusive when learning is tightly bound to specific tasks or contexts (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000). Learners who have been trained to recognise cues associated with assessment success may struggle when those cues are absent. This failure of transfer exposes the fragility of learning that has not been grounded in understanding.

Importantly, learners themselves often recognise this gap. Many articulate a sense of unease: they may report feeling unprepared despite good results, anxious when faced with unfamiliar tasks, or uncertain about how their learning applies beyond the classroom. Such reflections suggest that learners are not simply passive recipients of educational design, but perceptive observers of its limitations. Attending to these experiences offers educators valuable insight into where education may be falling short of its emancipatory potential. By listening to learners and examining the consequences of performance-oriented design, educators can begin to realign practice towards understanding, agency, and meaningful learning.

Reframing the Role of the Educator

If education is to function as a means of emancipation, the role of the educator must be understood not simply as the delivery of content, but as the design of learning. While subject knowledge remains essential, teaching involves far more than transmitting information. Educators make continuous decisions about curriculum sequencing, task design, assessment, and feedback—decisions that shape what learners experience and what they are able to do as a result. Framing teachers as designers foregrounds the intentionality of these choices and highlights their impact on learning outcomes (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).

This reframing carries with it a heightened sense of professional responsibility for outcomes. When teaching is viewed as content delivery, learner success or failure can be attributed primarily to effort or ability. In contrast, a design-oriented perspective recognises that outcomes are influenced by how learning experiences are structured. As Wiliam (2011) notes, when patterns of underachievement are consistent, they are rarely accidental; they are often the predictable consequences of instructional design. Professional responsibility, therefore, extends beyond covering content to ensuring that teaching supports understanding, progression, and transfer.

Central to this responsibility are diagnosis, precision, and intentionality. Diagnosis involves understanding learners’ starting points, including their prior knowledge, misconceptions, and levels of readiness. Precision refers to aligning curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment with clearly defined purposes, avoiding unnecessary complexity or ambiguity. Intentionality requires educators to make deliberate choices about what is taught, how it is taught, and why. Together, these practices reduce reliance on assumption and habit, replacing them with evidence-informed decision-making (Ausubel, 1968; Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000).

Linking emancipation to professional accountability reframes accountability itself. Rather than viewing accountability solely in terms of external metrics or compliance, it becomes an ethical commitment to the learners entrusted to one’s care. Emancipatory education depends on educators taking responsibility for the distributive effects of their design choices, recognising that clarity, coherence, and fairness are not optional extras but core professional obligations. In this sense, emancipation is not opposed to accountability; it is its highest expression. By designing learning that builds understanding and agency, educators enact their professional responsibility to support learners in becoming capable, independent, and critically educated individuals.

Conclusion: Education for Emancipation

This article opened with the familiar verse “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), not as a declaration, but as an invitation to reflect on the purpose of education. Reconsidered through an educational lens, the verse speaks less to certainty and more to clarity, to the idea that freedom emerges when learners are able to see the world, their learning, and themselves more clearly. In this sense, education is not emancipatory because it inspires or reassures, but because it enables understanding.

Education frees learners by helping them make sense of complexity. Through carefully designed curricula, meaningful assessment, and purposeful feedback, learners develop the capacity to interpret information, recognise patterns, and exercise judgement. This clarity reduces dependency on authority and increases agency, allowing learners to act with confidence in unfamiliar situations. As Dewey (1938) argued, education should cultivate intelligent action, equipping learners not merely to participate in existing systems but to respond thoughtfully to changing conditions.

Crucially, emancipation follows understanding, not motivation alone. While motivation can initiate engagement, it cannot substitute for well-sequenced knowledge, explicit guidance, and opportunities to develop conceptual insight. Without understanding, motivation risks becoming frustration or superficial effort. Emancipatory education therefore demands precision, coherence, and intentionality in design, ensuring that learners are supported to move from dependence to independence over time (Biesta, 2013).

The challenge for educators, then, is not simply to engage or inspire, but to examine whether their practice genuinely supports clarity. Each decision about curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and feedback either sharpens learners’ understanding or obscures it. The reflective question that follows is therefore both simple and demanding:

Does my practice clarify the world for learners, or obscure it?

References

Ausubel, D. P. (1968) Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Biesta, G. (2010) Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Biesta, G. (2013) The Beautiful Risk of Education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Bjork, R. A. and Bjork, E. L. (2011) ‘Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning’, in Gernsbacher, M. A., Pew, R. W., Hough, L. M. and Pomerantz, J. R. (eds.) Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society. New York: Worth Publishers, pp. 56–64.

Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) ‘Assessment and classroom learning’, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), pp. 7–74.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L. and Cocking, R. R. (2000) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan.

Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007) ‘The power of feedback’, Review of Educational Research, 77(1), pp. 81–112.

Holy Bible, New International Version (2011) John 8:32. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Perkins, D. N. (1992) Smart Schools: From Training Memories to Educating Minds. New York: Free Press.

Ryan, R. M. and Deci, E. L. (2000) ‘Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions’, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), pp. 54–67.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by Design. 2nd edn. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Wiliam, D. (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.