Objectivity in pedagogy does not require excluding learners from investigation.

Evidence

Some may think it inadvisable to include the people as investigators in the search for their own meaningful thematics: that their intrusive influence (n.b., the “intrusion” of those who are most interested—or ought to be—in their own education) will “adulterate” the findings and thereby sacrifice the objectivity of the investigation. This view mistakenly presupposes that themes exist, in their original objective purity, outside people—as if themes were things. Actually, themes exist in people in their relations with the world, with reference to concrete facts. The same objective fact could evoke different complexes of generative themes in different epochal sub-units. There is, therefore, a relation between the given objective fact, the perception women and men have of this fact, and the generative themes. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 306

Categorization

• SEED: Directly speaks to the reader’s stated concern about the vanguard: Freire preemptively answers the ‘objectivity’ objection to co-investigation — a strong base for the redesign essay’s section on rejecting facilitation from above.
• XREF: Connects to the objectivity debates in feminist standpoint epistemology and to critiques of researcher neutrality. — connects to: Teaching is continual reinterpretation rather than transmission of fixed content — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 267