Critical Pedagogy and Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation in Brazilian Primary Education

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is defined as an approach for educating students to become engaged citizens who actively pursue positive societal change (Giroux, 2020). Paulo Freire is the leading theorist, with the seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970, 2018). This work continues to generate debate regarding its profound engagement of politics in education, as well as its Marxist orientation. That said, it is essential to understand Freire’s background and the cultural environment of rural Brazil to fully grasp his theory. Born in the 1920s in one of the poorest regions in northeast Brazil, Freire lost his father at a young age, and his mother was a pre-school teacher. This, combined with the Communist Revolution of 1935 and the effects of the Great Depression, created a fertile context for Marxism to play an essential role in Freire’s educational ideology (Bhattacharya, 2011, pp. 9–20). Freire applied the Marxist concept of false consciousness to the classroom, using it to explain how laborers and marginalized groups may remain unaware of their exploitation by the dominant class. According to Freire (1970), false consciousness in the educational system keeps students confined in a symbolic cave; without true consciousness, there is no action, and societal inequalities perpetuate themselves. Freire (1970, 2018) characterizes the Western education model as a “banking system” in which professors present facts and students absorb those facts. It is a hierarchical, structured approach, positioning the professor as the sole source of knowledge to be deposited in students’ minds, like a bank.

Freire (1970, 2018) developed critical pedagogy around three sequential and conceptual pillars: (a) dialogue, (b) praxis, and (c) conscientization. First, proper education occurs when there is constant dialogue between teachers and students, allowing both to understand each other’s contexts. Dialogue reverses the traditional roles of teachers and students, with all parties assuming both roles. This dialogic relationship rejects the “banking model” of education and instead positions learners as active subjects capable of producing knowledge from lived experience. Giroux (2020) argues that dialogue is essential to democratic education, understood not as preparation for liberal political and economic institutions, but defined as a public good intended to nurture civic responsibility, social justice, and critical agency, rather than merely workforce training. Democratic education enables students to connect their personal experiences with broader social, political, and cultural structures, thereby cultivating critical reflection and civic responsibility.

Dialogue fosters reflection, which leads to the second concept known as praxis, from the Greek word for practice, prassein. For Freire, theory must be paired with practice so education leads to action. Through praxis, learners critically analyze their conditions, design collective responses, and act to transform their reality, continually reflecting in an ongoing cycle of learning and transformation. Praxis, therefore, positions education as an ethical and political practice, on the premise that knowledge gains meaning only when enacted in the struggle for humanization. This process aligns with experiential and participatory learning traditions that view learners as agents rather than passive recipients of information.

According to Freire (1970, 2018), praxis positions humans as protagonists in their own story, which leads to the third pillar, conscientization (consciousness + action), in which the individual is fully aware of their identity and becomes an agent of societal change. Conscientization reverses the false consciousness of the oppressed and marginalized sectors of society. The ultimate outcome of critical pedagogy is the creation of critical citizens. Giroux (2020) showed how conscientization is foundational for democratic life because it cultivates moral judgment, ethical responsibility, and the courage to intervene in the public sphere. Through conscientization, education becomes a process of empowerment in which learners come to see themselves capable of shaping history—beyond just their own story—rather than objects shaped by it. Indeed, Giroux (2020, p. 1) states that the primary goal of critical pedagogy is to produce “citizens who are critical, self-reflective, knowledgeable, and willing to make moral judgments and act in a socially responsible way.” The goal of creating critical citizens through education is a unique contribution of critical pedagogy and differentiates it from critical theory more generally.

Critical pedagogy has been implemented in many impoverished communities within developing countries where education aims to address structural inequality and social exclusion. In Latin America, this aim led to a convergence between Marxist social analysis and the Catholic Church’s social teaching, resulting in the movement known as Liberation Theology. Initially developed by Gustavo Gutiérrez in 1968, this theology advocated a more active role for the Catholic Church in addressing social issues (Gutiérrez, 2023), particularly during a period when Latin America faced several totalitarian regimes. According to Gutiérrez (2023), Liberation Theology is a Christian theological movement that interprets faith through the lived experience of the poor and oppressed. It argues that social, political, and economic injustice are not only moral concerns but structural realities that must be transformed through collective action. In Brazil, grassroots ecclesial communities emerged, and some Catholic priests applied the Liberation Theology to their impoverished contexts (Boff, 1987).

Liberation Theology parallels critical pedagogy in its emphasis on lived experience, collective reflection, and action as pathways to emancipation. Boff (1987) taught that faith should emerge from engagement with the concrete realities of marginalization, such as hunger, poverty, and exclusion, rather than from abstract doctrine alone. These lived experiences prompt collective reflection within faith communities, fostering critical awareness of oppressive social conditions. This process culminates in action as individuals and communities seek to transform unjust structures in line with their interpretation of biblical principles of justice and dignity. Scholars have explicitly mapped this process onto the three pillars of critical pedagogy, aligning dialogue with lived experience, praxis with collective reflection, and conscientization with action (Boff, 1987; McLaren & Jandrić, 2017). Thus, Liberation Theology mobilizes faith toward emancipatory ends just as critical pedagogy uses education as a way to free the oppressed.

Critical pedagogy has expanded to other regions like South Africa, where it was adopted in majority-Black schools to denounce the Apartheid regime through the slogan “education before liberation” (Perumal, 2016). Critical pedagogy has also been applied in underprivileged regions within developed economies. Scholars propose critical pedagogy as a tool of liberation for African-American communities in the US (Allen, 2004; Childs, 2017; Jennings & Lynn, 2005; Lynn, 2004) or economically depressed areas in Sweden (Berglund & Johansson, 2007).

Critical Pedagogy and Entrepreneurship Education

Research on the connection between critical pedagogy and entrepreneurship education is in its infancy. Berglund and Johansson (2007), Berglund and Wigren-Kristoferson (2012), and Verduyn and Berglund (2019) have described using critical pedagogy as a framework to teach entrepreneurship in higher education, demonstrating how education can become a tool for individual freedom. Berglund and other scholars initiated the TrEE project (Transforming Enterprise Education), a consortium of European higher education professors using critical pedagogy to rethink the role of entrepreneurship education in addressing societal challenges. These studies conclude that entrepreneurial potential is latent in communities, but dominant discourses can inhibit initiatives aimed at challenging the status quo. Critical pedagogy, in this sense, can ignite entrepreneurs to rediscover themselves as agents of change.

Critical pedagogy and effective entrepreneurship education seemingly share common foundational principles centered on action, reflection, and empowerment. Entrepreneurship education requires praxis because the cycle of acting and reflecting is inherent to entrepreneurial activity (Hägg & Kurczewska, 2016). Reflection also enables entrepreneurship students to become lifelong learners, even outside the classroom (Achtenhagen & Johannisson, 2018). More recently, Walmsley and Wraae (2022) identified five common principles between critical pedagogy and entrepreneurship education, suggesting that the former can serve as a more effective framework for teaching entrepreneurship. Both subjects are action-oriented, transformation-oriented, emphasize empowerment/autonomy, are reflexive, and seek reconciliation between professor and student. An entrepreneurial training program for impoverished farmers in Rwanda successfully applied critical pedagogy not for revolutionary goals, but to spur entrepreneurial activity (Rubyutsa et al., 2024), for example. Additionally, leading entrepreneurship pedagogy emphasizes how the way in which content is taught is as important as the content itself (Neck et al., 2014). Indeed, a chapter in Neck and colleagues’ (2014, pp. 84–102) shows similarities with Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, with a suggestive title: “The Practice of Reflection.” They state that “one of the hardest things we have seen people struggle with in preparing to teach in new ways (as opposed to stand and deliver) is to let go of the power, in essence giving the student more responsibility for the learning” (Neck et al., 2014, p. 99).

Critical pedagogy also has its downsides, primarily its heavy Marxist orientation (Lather, 2002) that delegitimizes its pragmatism in the eyes of its detractors. Because it was developed in an environment of political oppression, critical pedagogy embeds an insurgent orientation that positions oppressed classes against the elite. The strong revolutionary content casts agreement between oppressor and oppressed as unattainable. In the context of education, scholars have provided a compelling critique of Marxist-influenced pedagogical approaches by exposing how emancipatory intentions can paradoxically generate new forms of constraint within the classroom. Ellsworth’s (1989) analysis demonstrated that critical pedagogy often operates on the basis of implicit assumptions about “false consciousness,” positioning educators as ideologically enlightened and students as subjects in need of political awakening. This dynamic can silence dissent, discourage genuine dialogue, and reframe disagreement as a moral or intellectual deficiency rather than a legitimate critique. Extending this concern, Biesta (2017) argued that when education is oriented toward producing a predetermined form of political or critical subjectivity, pedagogical authority shifts from facilitating open inquiry to directing students toward normatively defined outcomes. In such cases, education risks becoming instrumentalized for ideological formation rather than oriented toward intellectual autonomy and democratic plurality. It becomes an issue of who controls the narrative about the myths of oppression that are being demystified. Together, these critiques suggest that when Marxist approaches in the classroom (i.e., neo-Marxist pedagogical theories) are treated as prescriptive frameworks rather than interpretive tools, they may undermine the very goals of emancipation and agency they claim to advance by narrowing the space for independent judgment and plural perspectives.

Taken together, these critiques highlight the tension between critical pedagogy’s emancipatory aspirations and the risks associated with its ideological prescriptiveness. Yet, even as scholars caution against treating critical pedagogy as a normative political framework, its core educational tenets regarding dialogue, praxis, and the cultivation of agency seemingly align with how individuals learn to initiate action and shape their futures. This raises the question of how the formative effects of critical pedagogy can extend beyond its political aims to shape individual dispositions related to entrepreneurship.

Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation

Individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) captures what it means for an individual to “be entrepreneurial,” independent of firm ownership, venture creation, or formal organizational roles (Clark et al., 2025, p. 672). The construct extends from organizational-level research on entrepreneurial orientation (Covin & Lumpkin, 2011; Lumpkin & Dess, 1996) to measure durable individual orientations toward initiating action, shaping one’s future, and navigating uncertainty. As such, IEO is not limited to being a narrow skill set utilized when founding a new firm, but it can be enacted across a range of everyday contexts, including social, civic, and personal pursuits (Clark et al., 2024).

Research on IEO has primarily focused on outcomes rather than origins, with most studies examining IEO as an explanatory variable, examining its relationship to entrepreneurial intention, innovation, intrapreneurship, strategic behavior, or performance outcomes across organizational and educational settings (see review in Clark et al., 2024). By contrast, less attention has been devoted to understanding how IEO develops. Clark and colleagues (2024, p. 374) identify this imbalance and call for greater attention to “formational” questions regarding antecedents, including how individuals can develop IEO, and how the environment might shape its development. This gap is particularly salient in educational contexts, where pedagogical practices may aim to cultivate agency, future orientation, and resourcefulness.

In summary, the literature suggests many points of convergence between critical pedagogy and entrepreneurship education. While critical pedagogy has historically viewed education as a means for societal transformation within explicit sociopolitical contexts, scholars are beginning to integrate its core principles to reframe entrepreneurship education as a tool for empowerment and societal advancement. However, it is essential to understand how to apply the concepts of critical pedagogy in a more politically and ideologically neutral approach in the classroom. This tension is especially salient given calls for greater attention to the antecedents of IEO, which remain underexplored in educational settings. Accordingly, we examine how critical pedagogy shapes entrepreneurial dispositions and behaviors in primary school students, illuminating both its developmental potential and its limitations as a way of preparing children for a possible future of entrepreneurship.

Research Context and Sample

Our research context is the state of Paraiba, which places 21st out of the 27 states in Brazil in the Human Development Index according to the last Brazilian Census in 2022 (PNUD & João Pinheiro Foundation, 2022). Paraiba also ranks 25th in the nation in terms of illiteracy (Derevecki, 2025). Our context of a community school in Paraiba adds another layer of complexity to this research since the school is in the rural city of Bananeiras, with a population of about 23,000.

Data Collection and Analysis

We began data collection for our larger research project when one author (native of Brazil) first heard about the SOH. Two authors conducted 12 individual exploratory interviews and three focus groups with 70 informants to learn about the context and how the SOH operated. After initial analyses, these authors conducted a second round of individual interviews with 25 informants and three focus groups with 25 informants, along with classroom observations of an eighth-grade class at the SOH. These first two rounds were focused on the SOH: students, parents, administrators, board members, faculty, and staff. Finally, we conducted a third round of data collection that focused on the elite private and large public schools, and on the local high school that receives students from all three K-9 schools, to understand how students, parents, faculty, and administrators perceived the SOH and its students. This round consisted of interviews of 21 informants and six focus groups of 34 informants, along with classroom observations of sixth-grade classes at the elite private and large public schools. In total, we conducted 58 interviews (1690 min) and 12 focus groups with 129 informants (575 min).

To analyze our data, we used Kreiner’s (2015) twin slate approach, an abductive grounded theory analysis technique (Murphy et al., 2017). In contrast to purely inductive methods, the twin slate approach balances theory engagement with analysis grounded in the data (Smith et al., 2010). We began our analysis by studying background material on websites and publicly available videos to familiarize ourselves with the context. Two authors independently coded transcripts. We then held joint-coding meetings to analyze in vivo grounded codes and to develop theoretical codes. Throughout the process the author team moved between data and theory on critical pedagogy and entrepreneurship, providing what Kreiner (2015, p. 350) calls “analytical flexibility” as we integrated codes and literature. We also mapped the data with codes and arranged the codes into a hierarchy, following Kreiner (2015) and colleagues (Kreiner et al., 2017), as shown in our data structure in Figure 1. As we progressed through the data analysis, we began to identify recurring themes, such as the vital role that critical pedagogy played in the educational journey of the students. We also noticed that informants spoke of core entrepreneurship ideas like autonomy and proactiveness, even though students were not taking part in overt entrepreneurship training. By revisiting theory between rounds of interviews, we started to identify how critical pedagogy affected the development of entrepreneurial skills and dispositions. We also presented our findings to organizational leaders after each round of interviews during debriefing sessions to build trustworthiness.OPEN IN VIEWER

Education at the School of Hope

We observed Freire’s three sequential conceptual pillars at work in the SOH, and noted that these three pillars were almost entirely absent in our data from the public and elite private schools. In Table 1, we present additional exemplar quotes for each of Freire’s three pillars to complement those in the text. We also stress that these three conceptual pillars are sequential; dialogue leads to praxis, and praxis leads to conscientization.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Exemplar Quotes Demonstrating How Paulo Freire’s Principles Are Applied at the School of Hope

Dimension	Exemplar quote
Dialogue	“Whoever gives, also receives… What I teach is this perspective of relationship, of exchange.” (SOH board member/husband of co-founder/principal)
	“It’s the praise, criticism, and proposals. Praise what is working, criticize what is not… and propose what can be improved.” (Parent #4 of SOH student)
	“Here, no, they participate in committees, they participate in choosing everything. They propose, they critique.” (Parent #2 of SOH student)
	“The nice thing is they are called into a circle, into the center, to explain, to apologize, to show regret both to the parents and the school.” (Parent #5 of SOH student)
Praxis	“I see it as a question of the school’s sustainability. Many external solutions are sought… but there is little recognition that the internal community holds many possibilities.” (SOH board member and parent #6 of SOH student)
	“I was unemployed, so I began to help… in the kitchen, cleaning a room, helping with student tutoring. Then I started seeing and getting enchanted.” (Parent #2 of SOH student)
	“If each person contributes a little of their time, we can surely accomplish many things.” (Parent #7 of SOH student)
Conscientization	“So, it represents this—the power of education is what transforms humanity. … We are going to transform society using Paulo Freire as a reference.” (SOH board member/husband of co-founder/principal)
	“The great challenge of education is to ensure that the oppressed, once no longer oppressed, do not become oppressors.” (SOH founder and principal)
	“I think unfortunately there is still the vision that school functions as a warehouse to put children.” (Parent #7 of SOH student)
	“Freire’s ideas are used in the classroom, yes. In fact, they are what is used the most.” (SOH teacher/“tutor”)
	“SOH has a very different pedagogy, more liberating… it works with the student as a critical person, developing autonomy.” (SOH teacher/“tutor”)
	“A dream dreamed alone is just a dream, but a dream dreamed together is a reality.” (SOH student #3)

Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation at the School of Hope

In our interviews and observations, it became clear that the pedagogy promoted at the SOH was developing entrepreneurial dispositions and behaviors in the students. Indeed, when we asked the SOH principal for the name of an alumnus to interview, the young architect entrepreneur was at the top of mind. While the students were not receiving “targeted” entrepreneurship education to train them in frameworks such as lean start-up or business model canvas, they were nonetheless being taught how to become entrepreneurial. In essence, they were being prepared to become future entrepreneurs by seeing the world around them as an entrepreneur would see it. Additionally, while not the focus of this paper, we believe that the “revolutionary” educational example set by the principal—the school founder and a social entrepreneur herself—and how she was praised by parents and SOH staff, contributed to students seeing her as a positive role model worth emulating (field notes).

While the founder and principal of the school is a social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow, her view of traditional entrepreneurship was seen through Freire’s critical lens; traditional entrepreneurs are the capitalist oppressors, such as real estate developers who buy small farmers’ land to build high-end gated communities (field notes). Indeed, she viewed the traditional ratio studiorum pedagogical approach as a model in which administrators and faculty are the oppressors and students are the oppressed (field notes). She cited Freire’s teaching that “the great challenge of education has to do with the oppressed leaving their oppression, without them turning into the oppressors themselves.” Yet, while decrying entrepreneurship, the SOH founder and principal was unknowingly using a pedagogical approach that fostered entrepreneurial dispositions and behaviors in the students. We found this paradox intriguing.

In the remainder of this section, we show how the critical pedagogy approach implemented at the SOH imbued students with varying degrees of an IEO. Table 2 provides exemplar quotes from our informants demonstrating an IEO in the students.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Exemplar Quotes Demonstrating an Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation at the School of Hope

Dimension	Exemplar quote
Autonomy	“The word that stands out the most is autonomy. That’s the word that stands out. Autonomy. The students at the School of Hope know how to walk on their own to achieve knowledge.” (SOH Faculty Focus Group)
	“The tutor presents issues to the students… They choose the most interesting one… The student should view the content and present the following week. From the presentation, they discuss the issue. After that they move on to the next topic.” (SOH Faculty Focus Group)
	“[What is the greatest gift you received from the School of Hope?] Autonomy. I learned how to be autonomous.” (SOH student #1)
	“[Students] show their ideas, they plan, they organize and execute. So there is an organization for this. They do it themselves, with this autonomy.” (SOH staff member)
	“Many times, we guide them in some things, and suddenly, in a short time, they surprise us with something more, in relation to autonomy. [Our daughter’s] awakening to study reading is absurd. Suddenly, reading every label, wanting books, wanting newspapers. … That training, that autonomy what she was generating, that need, she knows what she wants, she comes here, decides and explains what she wants.” (Parent #1 of SOH student)
	“The school develops autonomy in the child, to get a voice, to say the what he thinks. He can go against the what the teacher said, as long as you respect it. And I think they build that here in the children.” (Parent #2 of SOH student)
Proactiveness	“We need to change the strategy. For example, we need to invite a cooperative (…) to increase the diversity of fruits, vegetables, and garden produce at the fair.” (Parent at SOH’s Farmers Market)
	“[Our son] was playing soccer here, and the soccer ball went over the fence downhill [into a restricted area]. He told us and we said, “You should be more careful.” Then, at 5 a.m. the next morning, he woke up because he knew that was the time that the employee would arrive. So, at 5 a.m., he was there waiting for the employee to ask him to help him out. So, they found the soccer ball. That it’s how it happens in the School of Hope.” (Parent #2 of SOH student)
	“The majority of the people want to work for the government or to be unemployed, it is very rare for people to set up their shop. [How do you believe that that SOH started you to become an entrepreneur?] I started drawing there and these drawings always motivate me to pursue my dreams. The professors were always motivated but by nature I’m a very pessimistic person, I believe that everything does not work out. But somehow the professors at the SOH talked to me. They see me on the street and I do not recall their names, but the professors know my name. I think that is unusual.” (Former student at SOH and architect entrepreneur)
Innovativeness	“To me, being an entrepreneur means looking at life with multiple lenses, expanding horizons, seeing an object with a new perspective.” (SOH founder and principal)
	“Everything that we do inside this school is looking for a new alternative to the form of education.” (SOH founder and principal)
Competitiveness	“Paulo Freire says that we can only have hope if we fight. Everything that we do inside this school is fighting for a new type of education. It’s something that we want to change the way that our ancestors were taught.” (SOH founder and principal)
	“[How are you involved with the SOH?] I am a Portuguese professor here and I organize events. For example, my husband brought a robotics program here, and the kids did it really well, and they were invited to compete. They were invited to compete in Sao Paulo, but the city (Bananeiras) didn’t give them tickets for them to travel to Sao Paulo. So, they raised the funds, and then the kids traveled there.” (Parent #3 of SOH student)
Risk-taking	“I see a bright future. As long as we think about a social organization… I see sustainability as the issue. Too many external solutions are sought—donations, grants—while the internal community’s potential is not recognized.” (Parent at SOH’s farmers market)
	“Because, you see, self-sustaining—based on what? In local relations, we’re like a fantasy island… To survive, we need to raise funds, we need a good relationship with public authorities.” (SOH board member/husband of co-founder/principal)

Mechanism 1—Agency Forming: School With Students

We found that a number of internal-facing elements related to agency formation explain why critical pedagogy develops increased autonomy and proactiveness in the SOH students. These elements include individual identity, harmony, and personal responsibility and were most evident at the individual level (Figure 1). First, we observed the SOH promotes an individual identity in the students as self-directed learners. This facet of the school is manifest as students oversee their own learning process, being the protagonists in the school environment. Indeed, a sign at the entrance to the SOH reads, “I am the protagonist of my own education” (field notes).

Second, the SOH teaches students to be in harmony with each other. We observed harmony at the SOH in several ways. For instance, there is no distinction between faculty, staff, students, and parents. This does not mean there is no conflict, yet it does mean everyone has an equal opportunity to express themselves. From the student perspective, students are seen as equals, regardless of grade, age, or income level. The first time we visited the school, we were received by a “hospitality committee” composed of students of all ages. No faculty or staff received us, and students guided us on a tour through the school. Additionally, when one person raises their hand, students are taught that no matter the age or position, everyone listens to this individual. Finally, while our context is a very conservative region in Brazil, students with disabilities or from the LGBTQIA+ community are treated as equals and do not suffer bullying as expected in other schools (field notes). This stands in contrast to the large public school, where the principal mentioned that their behavioral problems include illegal drugs and sexual assault; these problems are addressed through increased security in the school with webcams and security personnel (field notes).

Finally, students are expected to take personal responsibility for their behaviors. The conscientization promoted by the school reframed students’ relationship to the future. Rather than adapting to given conditions in the broader society, these critically conscious students begin to see themselves as responsible for shaping those conditions. The school encourages personal responsibility, as demonstrated by one parent:

“If there is a door that is broken, the students have to find a solution. How to fix this? How to fix a window that is broken [at school]? So if they broke it, they must find a solution. He has a lot of knowledge, and it changes the way that he thinks.” (Parent #2 of SOH student)

Mechanism 2—Collective Mobilizing: School and Students Against Environment

We also observed a number of external-facing elements related to collective mobilizing that explain why critical pedagogy develops increased innovativeness, competitiveness, and risk-taking in the SOH students. By collective mobilizing, we refer to the process of individuals coming together to confront challenges faced by marginalized social groups seeking to protect themselves from economic, political, social, and environmental harms (Almeida, 2019). We found this to be a weaker relationship than the agency forming mechanism we observed for Autonomy and Proactiveness. These elements were occurring at the level of the group and include collective identity, collective struggle, and collective action. We term these “collective” because it was clear that the school and students were working together to become more innovative, competitive, and risk-taking to rise above their external circumstances in the face of severe challenges they encountered in society, and they expressed the belief that these challenges could only be overcome by working together against a common “other.”

First, the administration, faculty, parents, and students work to create a collective identity in which they seem to prioritize group goals and cohesion over personal desires. Given the lack of tuition revenue and its associated challenges, some parents offered to pay tuition because they could afford to, but the principal would not accept the funds as doing so might upset the sense of togetherness they were striving to achieve (field notes). Additionally, classes consist of students from multiple grades in one room, which created a “school identity” rather than an “8^th grade identity,” for example (field notes).

We saw clear manifestations of collective struggle as the SOH students, parents, faculty, and administration engage in revenue-generating activities to stay solvent. For example, the principal’s husband (and board member) stated that the School of Hope’s existence is a symbol of resistance to the de facto public and private education system because the SOH is an institution with no public funding and is tuition-free (field notes); they receive their funding from grants, donations, and earned income activities. This struggle is so pronounced that the school leadership nearly accepted a “buy out” offer from the municipality that would guarantee resources, while constraining their independence because they would become part of the public system (field notes).

Regarding collective action, students at the SOH were actively developing the critical literacy necessary to resist the oppression they perceived from the local municipality. Students, parents, and the principal challenge dominant narratives surrounding the superiority of the ratio studiorum model taught in the public and private schools; this was stated by the director of curriculum for the municipality. Students likewise challenge this narrative when relating their experiences with friends near their homes and discussing how their schools are different (field notes). Finally, we observed students acting collectively in their efforts to transform unjust conditions, or emancipation from oppression through education, such as self-formed groups engaging in fundraising for school improvements. In this sense, the students were not merely informed but critically conscious, ethically grounded, and committed to social responsibility, embodying Freire’s vision of education as a practice of freedom (Giroux, 2020).

Limitations and Future Research

Like any study, ours is not without limitations, which stem primarily from the data source and context. Primary school education in Brazil and the possibilities for necessity or opportunity entrepreneurship differ from those in other parts of the world, such as the Global North. This calls into question the transferability of our findings. Our findings are particularly relevant to much of Latin America, given the similar economic and political development paths taken by these countries. Future research could examine the extent to which Freire’s critical pedagogy is being applied to primary school education in other countries, and with what implications for the development of entrepreneurial dispositions and behaviors. While we found strong support for autonomy and proactiveness as a result of critical pedagogy, results for innovativeness, competitiveness, and risk-taking were more nuanced. We recognize that developing entrepreneurial dispositions and behaviors was not consciously being pursued at the SOH; this was an unexpected spillover from the school’s desire to educate critical citizens. Future research might explore how the principles of critical pedagogy might more purposefully foster innovativeness, competitiveness, and risk-taking. We also recognize the potential difficulties of transferring a Marxist educational philosophy to many parts of the Global North, given different political leanings. This fact challenges educators and scholars to examine how the principles of dialogue, praxis, and conscientization can be separated from politically divisive ideologies to find common ground in education that will benefit future entrepreneurs.