A Reflection on: Serrano, C. (2025) Empowering Education in the Age of AI: Moving Beyond the Banking Model with Freire’s Problem-Posing Approach
Paulo Freire’s revolutionary vision of education has long shaped conversations about humanising learning. Dr Christyna Serrano’s article, Empowering Education in the Age of AI: Moving Beyond the Banking Model with Freire’s Problem-Posing Approach, brilliantly repositions his pedagogy within the AI-infused 21st century. Her ideas, deeply resonant with my own pedagogical explorations, challenge educators to rethink the role of technology in shaping student agency, inquiry, and liberation.
Freirean Pedagogy Meets AI: The Core Premise
Dr Serrano examines Freire’s distinction between banking education—where students passively receive knowledge – and problem-posing education, which fosters critical inquiry and dialogue. She argues that AI has the potential to either reinforce the former or elevate the latter. The key? Purposeful implementation. AI can be used either as a tool of rigid information deposit (banking model) or as a collaborator in structured, inquiry-driven learning (problem-posing model).
“Problem-posing engagement with AI aligns with Freire’s vision of humanising and liberatory education. It positions students as empowered knowledge creators rather than passive consumers.”
This approach, she argues, prioritises uniquely human capacities: ethical reasoning, creativity, collaborative meaning-making, and critical consciousness.
The Cycle of Praxis in AI-Enhanced Learning
One of Dr Serrano’s most compelling contributions is her Cycle of Praxis in AI-Enhanced Learning. This iterative model ensures that students engage AI tools not as oracles but as conversational partners. Through an ongoing process of questioning, reflecting, and reimagining, students learn with AI rather than from it.
She also outlines distinct roles in dialogical education, demonstrating how teachers and students navigate co-learning with AI. These roles—which range from facilitators to co-investigators—mirror the participatory ethos I strive for in my own history pedagogy.
AI, the Banking Model, and the Danger of Superficial Change
Dr Serrano warns against a “sophisticated technological veneer” that merely updates the banking model rather than transforming it. She provides a sharp comparison of AI’s potential outcomes under each framework:
- Banking Model Outcomes: Passive consumption of AI-generated knowledge, memorisation, hierarchical learning structures.
- Problem-Posing Outcomes: AI-facilitated critical inquiry, student agency, reciprocal learning relationships.
This cautionary note aligns with my concerns about ensuring AI supports a pedagogy that can do more and be more. My own work explores how AI can contribute to reparative and generative historical pedagogy—frameworks that move beyond traditional modes of history teaching to foster inquiry that is ethically engaged, future-oriented, and critically reflective.
A reparative approach seeks to acknowledge and redress the silences and biases in historical narratives, ensuring that marginalised voices are heard and critically examined. A generative approach, in contrast, pushes students to explore and construct possibilities for the future, using historical thinking as a foundation for civic agency. Dr Serrano’s Cycle of Praxis is an insightful parallel to this work, reinforcing the idea that education must not just transmit knowledge but generate new ways of understanding and acting in the world.
A Call to Remember: Education as Humanisation
Dr Serrano’s closing argument is both a challenge and a reminder:
“Most importantly, it calls us to remember that the ultimate purpose of education, as Freire reminds us, is humanisation—the ongoing process of becoming more fully human through critical engagement with the world.”
This sentiment powerfully aligns with my evolving work on technology-infused transformative history pedagogy. While I draw inspiration from Dewey rather than Freire, I see our trajectories intersecting: education must not just transmit knowledge but generate possibilities. My own research explores how AI can serve as a tool for fostering structured inquiry within history classrooms—helping students to engage meaningfully with historical complexities rather than simply reinforcing established narratives. Dr Serrano’s insights affirm and extend this vision.
Final Thoughts
Reading Dr Serrano’s work was both affirming and galvanising. Her articulation of AI as a tool for critical, problem-posing engagement resonates deeply with my research. As I refine my own framework for history pedagogy, her scholarship pushes me to further consider AI’s role in enabling inquiry and historical agency.
To Dr C – thank you. Your work is a beacon, urging educators to be vigilant, critical, and hopeful as we integrate AI into our classrooms. Like you, I choose to say yes to the challenge, yes to inquiry, and yes to reimagining education for a more just and empowered future.
Disrupted History 