Kleber’s Imaginations for Just Educational Futures

A guest blog post written by André Freitas, Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Education and Development, Lusofona University, Portugal. 19th March 2025.

This post stems from the recent article “Teachers’ professional development within art experiences: Pedagogical narratives for hopeful educational futures”* published in Professional Development in Education. Grounded in Dewey’s philosophical principles of experience and narrative inquiry, the article explores the biographical narratives of three elementary school teachers in Portugal and Brazil, addressing the tensions between institutional regulation and personal emancipation. This post follows Kleber’s journey, shaped by social restrictions and his desire to be his true self, as he envisions collective futures.

Kleber teaches visual arts at a public elementary school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Through material, symbolic, epistemic, and affective practices, he cultivates a school environment where imagination becomes a means of reckoning with historical inequities and working towards just educational futures. In doing so, his teaching embodies a reparative pedagogy, acknowledging past injustices and striving to transform their enduring legacies in education.

Biographical narrative of Kleber

‘Kleber has lived on the fringes but remains joyful and spirited, disrupting the daily lives of adults and children alike. Raised in black Candomblé culture, Kleber’s life is like a seed needing constant care. Coming from a poor family in a remote area of north-eastern Brazil, he constructed imaginative worlds where he could be anything – an actor, teacher, dancer or singer. With a piece of plywood, an old wardrobe, and a piece of blue chalk, he lived his stories. The world where he could be many things had to be interrupted to start early supporting and financially assisting his family. In the early 1990s, his family moved to São Paulo and then Rio de Janeiro, leading Kleber away from school. With a strained relationship with his father and a complicated closeness to his mother, who endured hardships to secure his education, school became a place of hope. At sixteen, he left school to work but retained his sense of play, dancing, and jumping. Despite feeling marginalised by public policies of a ‘coffee with milk republic’, Kleber nurtured his inner child and returned to school. In 2007, a conversation about a majestic building in downtown Rio de Janeiro led him to the Rio de Janeiro Higher Education Institute. Enchanted by its architecture, he vowed to study there. After passing the entrance exam, he enrolled in the pedagogy course and graduated as an educator specialising in visual arts, embracing his multifaceted dreams. In 2010, Kleber began his teaching career in elementary school, viewing artistic practice beyond a way of production. Kleber understood artistic practice and teaching more than teaching arts references without self-appropriation. For him, art is an act of human resistance and inherent to himself. Pursuing a doctorate in education with Ana Mae Barbosa, focusing on the artist Cândido Portinari, he engages deeply with his past and present, believing that education reveals one’s true self. Kleber’s journey, marked by adversity and resilience, reflects his belief in the transformative power of art and education. From his imaginative childhood to his role as a teacher, Kleber’s life underscores the importance of nurturing creativity and self-expression as acts of resistance and growth.’ [1]

Reclaiming the right to dream

In the dim light of a makeshift stage, Kleber has long imagined a different life. Nurtured by the vibrant traditions of Candomblé, a religious practice rooted in African beliefs brought to Brazil by enslaved people, he has created his own worlds while overcoming the constraints imposed by society. Although the milk coffee politics of 1889-1930 primarily reflected the dominance of dairy industry in Minas Gerais and the coffee industry in São Paulo within the republic’s political landscape, its impacts endure. The privileging of dominant classes was evident in the alternating presidency between these two states (out of 17 in 1889), the control of local oligarchies over the electoral system, and the effective suppression of political opposition. This consolidation of white oligarchies translated into political measures that led to class struggle [2]. Kleber’s family emerged from this context of structural inequity.

Before society could dictate his limits, Kleber became a thread weaving through his own life, resisting hardship with imagination and artistry. His journey is more than a story of personal resilience; it speaks to the structural inequalities that have long silenced marginalised voices. As an art teacher, Kleber refuses to treat artistic practice as a mere technical exercise. Instead, his pedagogical approach aligns with critical race theory, fostering sustained reflections on the relationship between race, racism, and the arts in education [3]. For him, artistic practice and art experiences are acts of resistance, calling for the reimagination of education.

Kleber’s professional development is built on the fundamental right to imagine – a right that cannot be erased by colonial legacies. It underscores the principle of being allowed to dream. His story reminds us of the vital connections between past, present, and future injustices in shaping teachers’ professional lives. For Kleber, teaching is about restoring the capacity to create, to take risks, to fail, and ultimately to reimagine. His narrative urges us to challenge restrictive notions of productivity and embrace failure as a vital pedagogy of life.

Colours of resistance

Kleber’s humble blue chalk is more than a tool – it is a testament to his reaffirmed desires, now shaping his professional practice. The photograph at the top of this page, taken by Kleber during an art activity at school, emerged from a discussion on self-representation. In this moment, his pupils hold the sky in their hands, moving beyond pre-established knowledge. This image stands as a reminder that futures are continuously drawn and redrawn, that resistance is etched in every line and colour, and that even the simplest materials can hold the weight of entire worlds [4].

If education is to be truly reparative, it must be willing to smudge the lines of what has been dictated, allowing new forms to emerge. Embracing reparation means committing to recognising and rectifying the injustices of the past, ensuring that every child and teacher has the freedom to imagine and inhabit a fairer future.

References

[1] Freitas, A., Pereira, F., & Nogueira, P. (2025). Teachers’ professional development within art experiences: Pedagogical narratives for hopeful educational futures. Professional Development in Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2025.2472186

[2] Felipe, E. S., & Bertolani, M. L. (2019). O Estado, os conflitos das classes dominantes e a influência do capital estrangeiro na defesa do café no Brasil na Primeira República (1889-1930) [The state, dominant class conflicts and the influence of foreign capital in Brazil’s First Republic (1889-1930). Revista De Economia Do Centro-Oeste, 5(2), 2–23. https://doi.org/10.5216/reoeste.v5i2.61643

[3] Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Kraehe, A.M., and Carpenter, B.S. (2018). The arts as white property: An introduction to race, racism, and the arts in education. In: R. Gaztambide-Fernández, A.M. Kraehe, and B.S. Carpenter II, eds. The palgrave handbook of race and the arts in education. Palgrave Macmillan, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65256-6_1

[4] Barbosa, A. M. (2021). Arte na pedagogia [Art in pedagogy]. Revista GEARTE, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.22456/2357-9854.117498

* For full and free access to the article on which this post is based, please contact the author.

Acknowledgments

André Freitas’s research is supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus contract ‘Future-oriented Stories of Digital Schools’ Capital: Imagining Times, Places and Sociabilities of Education’ (2023.08557.CEECIND) – https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.08557.CEECIND/CP2877/CT0002