Paulo Freire was Not Anti-Teacher-Authority

On LinkedIn, Kirschner recently reposted a blog that he originally wrote in March 2025 called The Seductive Appeal of Discovery Learning. In other places, Kirschner has critiqued discovery-based learning, most famously in his 2006 article in Educational Psychologist, together with Sweller & Clark (Kirschner et al., 2006). In his March 2025 blog post he sought to explain why so many educators persist in their support for discovery-based learning despite the significant evidence that suggests it’s often ineffective for learning. In the blog post, Kirschner outlined ten reasons why he thinks the idea of discovery-based learning is appealing, despite being misguided. I agree with many of the reasons he lists. However, in his eighth reason, Kirschner mentioned the influence of Paulo Freire. He argued that educators, under the influence of Freire have been anti-authority and, therefore, “from this perspective, explicit instruction became equated with indoctrination, while discovery learning was seen as a path to emancipation.”