Aliene Villaça, STEAM teacher, guides a young person alongside their mother in a hands-on electronics activity. A moment that reflects shared pedagogy.
This month, our whole team of educators came together to discuss how affection transforms learning. Our initiatives work in peripheral territories and face daily the challenge of creating genuinely welcoming spaces. Here we explore the main lessons that will guide our education processes from now on.
Led by Aliene Villaça, PhD in Education and Coordinator of STEAM Education, and Patrícia Polzl, who holds a teaching degree and a bachelor’s in Visual Arts and is a STEAM Education teacher at Casa Hacker, we created a space of genuine exchange, where our educators shared experiences, challenges and discoveries about education in the historically vulnerabilised and peripheral territories where Casa Hacker works.
Affection: What Does It Really Mean?
Have you ever stopped to think about what makes a lesson truly meaningful? According to Aliene Villaça, affection is not merely warmth or kindness. It is everything that moves a person — their motivations, their dreams, their pain. It is everything that affects how they see themselves and relate to the world.
When an educator recognises this, everything changes. It stops being important merely to “get through the content”. It becomes essential to create conditions in which each participant feels recognised, capable and an important part of the educational process.
The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who studied deeply how we learn, showed that affective mediation is not a “humanist luxury” — it is, in fact, a fundamental mechanism for cognitive development. When an educator establishes genuine bonds with the learner, they are creating the ideal conditions for learning actually to happen.
The reality of those who learn
Every person who arrives at one of our initiatives brings with them:
- their life story, their experiences;
- their expectations and previous frustrations;
- their economic, family and social situation;
- their real capacities and limitations.
All of this directly affects how they learn. Ignoring it condemns the process to failure from the outset.
Active listening
The whole team shares one point of convergence: active listening is a fundamental practice in every initiative.
But what does that mean in practice? It is not simply “letting the other person speak”. It is being genuinely available to hear not only the words said, but also the silences, the expressions of the body, what is not put into words. Patrícia Polzl, STEAM teacher, stressed that this listening allows educators to identify real needs that frequently differ completely from what had initially been planned.
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire proposed something revolutionary in his time: the educator is not the holder of truths, but a facilitator of dialogues in which everyone learns from each other. This is the basis of dialogical pedagogy — the kind in which educator and learners talk, exchange and build knowledge together.
Horizontal relationships
At Casa Hacker, educators do not position themselves as authorities who have all the answers. They act as mediators (sometimes we also call them facilitators) who encourage autonomy, creation and agency in those who are learning. This stance breaks historical barriers between “teacher” and “pupil” — labels that often reproduce inequalities.
When that horizontality exists, something changes: participants feel freer to create, to question, to make mistakes and to learn from their own mistakes.
Lyneker, DJ and community leader in the Campo Grande District, supported by the Hub de Cidadania Ativa Quebrada em Movimento, running activities in the open coworking space of our initiative in the territory.
Trust does not happen by chance
Trust is built from the very first contact. At Minas em Tech, for instance, the process begins long before working with the students. Educators visit the schools and talk with the management, the teachers and the families. The first joint meeting, with a formal presentation of the project, is a crucial moment to establish: “we are really here, with mutual commitment”.
Nara Leme, STEAM teacher at Hackerclubes, quoted the African-American thinker bell hooks to reinforce an essential principle: “do not punish the truth”. It means allowing participants to express themselves authentically, without fear of reprisal for saying things that are “incorrect” or “unexpected”.
Hooks, in her book “Teaching to Transgress”, deepens Freire’s pedagogy with a feminist and anti-racist perspective. For her, education is a political act. Teachers must create spaces where all voices — regardless of gender, race or class — are genuinely valued.
A class of the Hackerclubes initiative in Rio de Janeiro, where participants learn in stations and in pairs to build a project together.
Non-violent education
Casa Hacker’s educators shared the pillars of Non-Violent Education:
- observe the situation without prejudgements;
- name and acknowledge the emotions involved;
- express thoughts clearly and honestly;
- make requests respectfully, without demand or punishment.
A practical and powerful detail: Nara Leme stressed that we should avoid the word “but” after praise. When we say “you did a good job, but…”, that “but” disqualifies everything that came before. The positive statement disappears.
The American consultant Marshall Rosenberg developed Nonviolent Communication (NVC), structuring communication around: observation (what actually happened), feeling (what I felt), need (what I needed) and request (what I am asking for now). This structure removes the judgements and symbolic violence that reproduce inequalities.
When conflicts arise
Here, conflicts are not settled with automatic punishment. The approach favours one-to-one conversations to understand the real motivations.
When there is disengagement in class, educators look into it: a need for income in the family? Pregnancy? Complex family situations? Health? These structural causes are almost always behind it — not “lack of discipline” on its own, in isolation.
Nyak MC, Project Manager and STEAM Education teacher, with Luciane, Executive Director of PRODICA, at the Digital Content Production workshop of Inova Quebrada
When there is disengagement in class, educators look into it: a need for income in the family? Pregnancy? Complex family situations? Health? These structural causes are almost always behind it — not “lack of discipline” on its own, in isolation.
The educator’s role as mediator
The educator is not the one who has all the answers, but the one who creates the conditions for learning to happen. They encourage autonomy by asking questions that lead participants to find their own paths.
Even the physical space changes in this approach: stations, circles and collaborative groups replace rows of desks, materials are made available for free exploration, tools such as a 3D printer become instruments of discovery.
Apparently simple activities are powerful:
- ice-breakers in which educators share personal objects and stories, encouraging genuine exchange;
- letters written to the future by email, which make it possible to map skills and needs discreetly, without testing or assessing.
Breaking determinisms
Nara Leme shared an experience in which she was warned about a student with a “negative” personality trait. In practice, she never identified that trait. A different pedagogy, a welcoming context — and the determinism created by third parties falls apart.
Stereotypes are harmful. They limit real possibilities.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a Portuguese thinker, proposes the concept of an “ecology of knowledges” — a dialogue between scientific knowledge and popular, Indigenous and Afro-descendant knowledges, without ranking them. Recognising this plurality of knowledges is essential, especially in peripheral contexts.
The Indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak complements this with a counter-colonial perspective, questioning Eurocentric models of knowledge historically imposed. For educators working with audiences from the outskirts, this means: do not accept stereotypes, recognise the plurality of knowledges your participants bring.
Shared pedagogy
Patrícia Polzl stresses that educators share information about each student. When one notices they are pushing someone too hard, a colleague can take a less intimidating approach. This collaboration recognises that connection happens in different ways with different people.
The whole team, made up of managers, social workers and coordinators, offers multiple points of support. A participant does not always feel safe talking to the main educator, but may turn to another member of the team.
That is humanity in education: recognising that we are different, that we relate differently, that we need multiple forms of support.
Patrícia Polzl, STEAM Education teacher, in a class of the technology and gender initiative Minas em Tech.
The challenge of deliverables
Here we have an essential conversation: accepting “the deliverable within each person’s possibilities”.
Aliene Villaça and Amanda Santos shared cases of participants who cannot deliver “perfect” science and technology projects because they are struggling with self-esteem, limited time, depleted energy. The focus then shifts from rigid metrics to personal development and the strengthening of self-perception.
A student who gave up on a project has not “failed for lack of ability”. They have probably faced invisible structural pressures that the traditional system does not recognise. Work, income, health, family — realities that education on the outskirts knows well.
Management that welcomes
Amanda Santos raised a critical point: management must give educators the confidence not to feel punished if they do not deliver 100% of the content planned for the year.
Working with audiences from the outskirts is not black and white. It demands flexibility, listening, adaptation.
Our lessons and practices so far
Foundations of Listening and Relationship:
- establish active listening as a principle of all interactions;
- build trust from the initial outreach, involving school, family and community;
- run activities that promote genuine mutual acquaintance;
- map contexts, experiences and needs before defining content;
- avoid judgements and stereotypes about students or territories.
The Educator’s Positioning:
- position educators as mediators, not hierarchical authorities;
- implement shared pedagogy with constant communication across the team;
- offer multiple points of listening and support (educators, managers, assistants);
- ensure mutual care, recognising that educators are affected too.
Pedagogical Approaches:
- continually adapt strategies to the specific realities of each group;
- practise non-violent education in conflict resolution, using Rosenberg’s structure;
- accept deliverables within each participant’s possibilities;
- recognise that dropping out has serious structural causes;
- transform physical spaces to encourage collaboration and autonomy;
- promote an ecology of knowledges that recognises the plurality of knowledge.
Management and Funding:
- make metrics flexible, taking into account peripheral realities and the common good as a principle;
- argue with funders that education on the outskirts requires the common good, not profit.
Theoretical references to study
Popular Education and Liberatory Pedagogy
Paulo Freire is a fundamental reference. His works “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Education as the Practice of Freedom” ground the concepts of consciousness-raising education and problematising dialogue — essential for stimulating reflection on and action upon reality.
Marta Harnecker, a Chilean thinker, offers practical methodologies. Her work on community leadership and the building of counter-hegemony is especially relevant to projects such as PerifaImpacto, which seek to foster the agency of leaders from the outskirts.
Communication and Dialogical Relationships
Marshall Rosenberg and Nonviolent Communication directly complement the pillars of Non-Violent Education. NVC structures communication into: observation, feeling, need, request — aligning with practices of conflict resolution without punishment.
The integration of Freire and Rosenberg is particularly powerful: while Freire proposes problematising dialogue as a tool of consciousness-raising, Rosenberg offers a practical structure for empathetic, clear communication.
Liberatory Pedagogy with a Feminist and Anti-Racist Perspective
bell hooks, in “Teaching to Transgress”, deepens Freire with a feminist and anti-racist perspective. She emphasises that education is a political act, that teachers must create spaces where all voices are valued — connecting with the principle of not punishing the truth.
Affection and Cognitive Development
Lev Vygotsky offers, through the “Zone of Proximal Development”, an understanding of how mediation and affect shape learning. His work “Thought and Language” deepens that relationship.
Finally, I want to recall that when we founded Casa Hacker in 2018, we believed that technology education was a right, not a privilege. Today, seven years on, I reaffirm that belief — but with one crucial lesson: what we do here works because it is built with people, not for them.
But here is what is uncomfortable: many educators, managers and public policies still operate as though learning were the transmission of content (what I call content-delivery processes). As though affection were a luxury. That is why we decided to share our practices today in this publication. It is not merely the record of a gathering — it is a manifesto that another model is possible, and that it is working here. It is an invitation for other organisations, schools and territories to see that the methodologies of Paulo Freire, bell hooks and Vygotsky are not distant theory. They are concrete practices that real educators carry out every day.
We commit to continuing to open our doors, to sharing experiences, to creating spaces of mutual learning. Because that is what popular education is: it belongs to no one, it is collective construction, from territory to territory, favela to favela, quebrada to quebrada.
Credits and Acknowledgements
This gathering was coordinated by Aliene Villaça, PhD in Education and Coordinator of STEAM Education, and Patrícia Polzl, who holds a teaching degree and a bachelor’s in Visual Arts and is a STEAM Education teacher at Casa Hacker, who created and cared for a genuine space of dialogue between educators. We are deeply grateful to the educators who shared their experiences, lessons and challenges: Hellio Couto, Nara Leme, Suellen Soares, Amanda Santos, Patrícia Polzl, Marcelo Oliveira, Celso Niger and Erlan Sousa, representing initiatives such as Minas em Tech, Inclusão Tech, Hackerclubes and PerifaImpacto.
This publication reflects lessons that run across all of Casa Hacker’s initiatives, each with its own specificities, but united by pedagogical principles of humanisation, listening and horizontality. We also acknowledge the thinkers and educators who ground our practices — Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Lev Vygotsky, Marshall Rosenberg, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Ailton Krenak, Marta Harnecker, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval — whose writings continue to guide our search for a liberatory education.
This publication is an invitation to continuity.
*This publication was produced from the dialogues and debates of the educators’ gathering in November. The text was written from the transcript generated automatically by Google’s Gemini AI. Credit and authorship of the pedagogical practices belong to the educators and their references.
References
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FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogia do Oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.
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FREIRE, Paulo. Educação como Prática da Liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.
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HOOKS, bell. Ensinando a Transgredir: a educação como prática da liberdade. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes.
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VIGOTSKI, Lev S. Pensamento e Linguagem. São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
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ROSENBERG, Marshall B. Comunicação Não Violenta: técnicas para aprimorar relacionamentos pessoais e profissionais. São Paulo: Ágora.
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SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa. A ecologia de saberes. In: A gramática do tempo: para uma nova cultura política.
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KRENAK, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
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HARNECKER, Marta. Reconstruindo a esquerda. São Paulo: Expressão Popular.
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DARDOT, Pierre; LAVAL, Christian. Comum: ensaio sobre a revolução no século XXI. São Paulo: Boitempo.