We speak, therefore we are: dialogical pedagogy and co-construction as a Freirean model of ontological and epistemic justice against the pedagogical dehumanization of black students in higher education

Despite policy commitments to widening participation, higher education classrooms remain sites where epistemic authority, relational recognition, and ontological legitimacy are unevenly distributed, for Black students in predominantly white institutions (PWIs). This article advances a Freirean model of dialogical pedagogy that repositions pedagogy as a site of justice-making in higher education. Drawing on Freirean dialogue, Black feminist epistemology, and scholarship on epistemic injustice and racialized misrecognition, the model conceptualizes justice as an pedagogical condition produced through teaching and learning practices, and locates justice-making within pedagogical relations and establishes access or inclusion initiatives as insufficient measures. Dialogical pedagogy redistributes interpretive authority, cultivates relations of recognition and care, and affirms students’ humanity within academic spaces historically structured by exclusion. Centering Black students’ experiences in PWIs, the article articulates epistemic, relational, and ontological justice as constitutive dimensions of pedagogical life and examines how dialogical pedagogy may be enacted through participatory practices, co-creation, and pedagogical partnership.