Education and Art in the Works of Francisco Brennand and in Paulo Freire’s Literacy Practices

Abstract

Contemporary education faces the need for dialogue between different fields of knowledge. Providing students with access to scientific knowledge in an integrated, articulated, and interrelated manner — that is, from an interdisciplinary perspective — constitutes an urgent practice within the realm of formal schooling. From this perspective, the present study aims to analyze the contributions that Interdisciplinary Image Reading (LI²) offers to education by promoting visual literacy. The research adopts a qualitative approach, based on bibliographic and documentary research, and applies the LI² methodology (Silva, 2021). As an analytical source, it draws on the works of Francisco Brennand created for the Culture Circle of the National Literacy Program (1964), coordinated by Paulo Freire. The results indicate that the appropriation of knowledge can occur in different ways and that the interdisciplinary proposal enables students, as historical-social beings, to integrate, articulate, and interrelate knowledge, fostering the development of critical awareness, emancipation, and the expansion of communicative abilities through visual literacy.