EDUCATING FOR AUTONOMY: PEDAGOGICAL PATHWAYS TO DEVELOP CRITICAL, CONFIDENT, AND PROTAGONIST SUBJECTS

Abstract

Educating for autonomy is one of the main challenges facing contemporary schools, particularly in a context in which students are continuously called upon to interpret information, position themselves regarding social issues, make decisions, and engage with different perspectives. This chapter aims to reflect on pedagogical pathways capable of fostering the development of critical, confident, and protagonist subjects, understanding autonomy not as absolute independence, spontaneity, or the absence of teacher mediation, but as an ethical, intellectual, affective, and social construction. This is a bibliographical study with a qualitative and reflective approach, grounded in classical authors such as Paulo Freire, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Henri Wallon, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks, brought into dialogue with recent articles, dissertations, and theses on active methodologies, critical thinking, student voice, protagonism, and school participation. The discussion shows that autonomy develops when students encounter genuine opportunities to question, argue, create, choose, assess their own progress, and participate in decisions related to learning. The superficial use of the concept of protagonism is also problematized, especially when it is used to make students individually responsible for their success or failure without considering social inequalities and institutional conditions. It is concluded that educating for autonomy requires teacher presence, pedagogical rigor, dialogue, listening, problematization of reality, and progressive experiences of participation through which students can learn to exercise freedom responsibly.