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Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development

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Abstract

Environmental teaching must deepen and widen students’ understandings on how the rest of Nature is affected by human actions and, consequently, upon each other as we are part of Nature. However, many environmental pedagogies do not critically teach to better understand the inseparable connections between environmental and social violence, and us dominating Nature. Critical, Freirean-based ecopedagogy is essential to read the complex, politically hidden dynamics of socio-environmental actions that lead to injustices and unsustainability (i.e., ecopedagogical literacy). Ecopedagogical reading includes decoding how racism, post-truthism, globalizations, neo(coloniality), patriarchy, heteronormativity, xenophobia, epistemicide, neoliberalism, and their intersectionalities falsely justify socio-environmental injustice and planetary unsustainably. I argue how critical theories are essential within environmental pedagogies, as well as research upon them, for students’ praxis to emerge for determining and doing actions needed to save Earth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Institute of Educational Theories, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Greg William Misiaszek

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Ali A. Abdi

  2. Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Greg William Misiaszek

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Misiaszek, G.W. (2022). Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development. In: Abdi, A.A., Misiaszek, G.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_17

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