Freire’s work was first translated into English around 1971, and composition theorist Ann Berthoff was one of the first to begin regularly citing him (Sutherland 275). Since then Freire’s ideas and methods have permeated scholarly literature and have themselves become tools for examining and evaluating the effectiveness of different composition theories and practices and for identifying its problems. Terms like that are ubiquitous in the field “educational transactions,” “dialogue,” or “dialogic approach,” “student engagement,” “problem-posing,” “praxis”, all originated with Freire.

What educators learn from Freire is that educational pedagogies for teaching are more than simply the methods or techniques that are applied or imposed onto students in order to deliver informational content. Our pedagogies must also involve ethical considerations and methodological practices that empower students, and enable them to “soar beyond the immediate confines of their own experiences…and imagine a future that would not merely reproduce the present. Critical thinking for Freire was not an object lesson in test-taking, but a tool for self-determination and civic engagement” (Giroux 716).

Freire also helped educators come to understand what is now considered common knowledge- that teachers are also learners. His work emphasized the social nature of learning, and he showed us that the most effective learning is a joint venture for both teacher and student. 

Developing a critical consciousness— the ability to recognize imbalances in social and political systems that create oppression— relies heavily on constant evaluative processes, and must therefore also include a willingness to self-evaluate, assess, and reflect critically on the part that one plays in alleviating or perpetuating those systems in order to change and improve themselves, their students, and the world around them.

 Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention;  through the
restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry that human beings 
pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
-Paulo Freire