Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 037
Let participants challenge the diagnosis
Participation becomes meaningful when affected people can influence the diagnosis, not merely react to a predetermined answer
Premise
Organizations frequently label a communication failure as an information deficit: employees, customers, or communities do not understand, so experts must explain more clearly. Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education challenges that assumption. His alternative to the ‘banking’ model treats people as participants in inquiry rather than containers into which established knowledge is deposited.
For executives, the critical issue is who can define the problem. Consultation after the categories, evidence, options, and outcome are fixed preserves one-way control beneath a participatory surface. Dialogue can expose lived constraints, conflicting definitions, and excluded knowledge. It does not make technical facts or formal authority disappear; it changes how they enter a shared investigation.
What the model is: Problem-Posing Education and Dialogue in Knowledge →
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryDoctrines, Principles & Normative Frameworks
- DomainVoice, Silence & Power
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Doctrines, Principles & Normative Frameworks
Sets out principles or criteria for what should be pursued, considered legitimate or done. Its contribution is evaluative or prescriptive: it gives reasons for judging conduct and arrangements, rather than merely describing their frequency.