Book review: Policy and practice: a development education review, fifteenth anniversary special edition

Giannis S. Efthymiou reviews the book 'Policy and practice: a development education review, fifteenth anniversary special edition, edited by Antonella Acinapura, Niamh Gaynor, Bernie Grummell, Su-ming Khoo, Mags Liddy, Benjamin Mallon, Gabriela Martínez Sainz, Gerard McCann and Stephen McCloskey. As noted by its title, Policy and Practice: A development education review celebrates the work of 15 years of the Centre for Global Education, Belfast. The edition also pays tribute to the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, with 2021 marking 100 years since his birth. As noted by McCloskey in the introduction of the edition, Freire’s work has significantly influenced the wider field of global education and development education. The two terms are used interchangeably within the edition; however, for the purposes of this book review, I will be using the term ‘development education’, in line with the title of the edition. Freire published extensively on critical pedagogy, but he is probably most widely known for Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1996), originally published in 1968. His thesis centres on the process of re-humanisation, the process of emancipation of both oppressed and oppressors, which according to him can only happen bottom-up through the struggle of the oppressed that have been de-humanised by the oppressors. A critical point towards re-humanisation is the awakening of the oppressed, them gaining critical consciousness of their situation or, as Freire describes it, the process of ‘conscientisation’.