Bio

  • Assistant Professor, Beijing Normal University, Faculty of Education, Institute of Educational Theories
  • Associate Director, Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA
  • Executive Editor, Teaching in Higher Education (TiHE) journal (2021-4)
  • Co-Editor, Global Comparative Education: Journal of the WCCES (World Council of Comparative Education Societies)
  • International Advisory Committee Member, UNESCO Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, UCLA

Dr. Greg William Misiaszek is an Assistant Professor at Beijing Normal University’s (BNU), Faculty of Education, Theories of Education Institute.  He also holds various positions including Co-Editor, WCCES’s journal Global Comparative Education and Associate Director, Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA.  His current work focuses on critical analysis of environmental pedagogies, with specific emphasis on ecopedagogy, through theories of globalizations, citizenships, race, gender, migration, Indigenous issues, and media, among others.  His first solo-authored published book (2018, Routledge) focuses on this analysis is entitled: Educating the Global Environmental Citizen: Understanding Ecopedagogy in Local and Global Contexts.  His 2020 Bloomsbury book Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Teaching for Planetary Justice and Global Sustainable Development further deconstructs critical environmental learning and literacies (i.e., ecopedagogical literacies). In addition, he is an editor of the Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education (2022) with Ali Abdi (The University of British Colombia), book series editor with Carlos Alberto Torres (UCLA) named “Freire in Focus” (Bloomsbury); and currently finishing a book entitled “Ecopedagogy: Freire and Environmentalism” (late 2022) for this short-length book series targeted to academic and non-academic audiences. Dr. Misiaszek has been invited internationally to give numerous lectures on these and other topics, as well as work collaboratively with various international organizations.  Before working at BNU, Dr. Misiaszek worked for over 17 years at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Andrus Gerontology Center, as well as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco (USF), and California State University, Long Beach.   Dr. Misiaszek holds a Ph.D. from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education in Social Science and Comparative Education, masters in distance education (USC Rossier), and bachelor’s from USC in Environmental Studies (emphasis in Chemistry).

“Planetary Citizenship: Learning Climate Justice” on Nothing Never Happens podcast (What do we need to learn to save the planet? Tina and Lucia discuss climate crisis, ecopedagogy, and liberatory teaching about environmental justice with critical pedagogue Greg Misiaszek.) – CLICK HERE for Apple Podcast link

<9 minute video on ecopedagogy (part of PESA AGORA). CLICK HERE to see 500-word description of ecopedagogy.
Interview on Global Citizenship Education (GC/E) and ecopedagogy for Prof. Emiliano Bosio’s GCE series
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About ecopedagogy
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Books on ecopedagogy by Greg

Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Teaching for Planetary Justice and Global Sustainable Development

2020, Bloomsbury

in series: Bloomsbury Critical Education (Peter Mayo)

Misiaszek argues that ecopedagogies grounded in critical, Freirean pedagogies construct learning that leads to human actions geared towards increased social and environmental justice and planetary sustainability. Throughout the book he discusses the need for teaching, reading, and researching through problematizing the causes of socio-environmental violence, including oppressive processes of globalization and constructs of “development”, “economics”, and “citizenship”, to name a few, that emerge from socio-historical oppressions (e.g., colonialization, racism, patriarchy, neoliberalism, xenophobia, epistemicide) and dominance over the rest of nature. Misiaszek concludes with ecopedagogies’ challenges within the current post-truth era and possibilities of reimagining UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Book Review: International Studies in Sociology of Education journal by David Yisrael Epstein-HaLevi

CLICK HERE for more information on this short-length book series on Paulo Freire

Educating the global environmental citizen: Understanding ecopedagogy in local and global contexts

2018, Routledge (Taylor & Francis)

in series: Critical Global Citizenship Education (Carlos Alberto Torres)

Misiaszek examines the (dis)connection between critical global citizenship education models and ecopedagogy which is grounded in Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. Exploring how concepts of citizenship are affected by globalization, this book argues that environmental pedagogues must teach critical environmental literacies in order for students to understand global environmental issues through the world’s diverse perspectives. Misiaszek analyses the ways environmental pedagogies can use aspects of critical global citizenship education to better understand how environmental issues are contextually experienced and understood by societies locally and globally through issues of globalization, colonialism, socio-economics, gender, race, ethnicities, nationalities, indigenous issues, and spiritualties.

Coming Out Spring 2023

Freire and Environmentalism: Ecopedagogy

in Bloomsbury’s short-length book series Freire In Focus

Series Editors: Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education

Editors: Ali A. Abdi & Greg William Misiaszek

Various chapters (in)directly on ecopedagogy including “Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development” by Greg

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select Publications

Misiaszek, G. W. (2022). What cultures are being reproduced for higher education success?: A comparative education analysis for socio-environmental justice. International Journal of Educational Research, 116, 1-11. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2022.102078

Misiaszek, G. W., & Rodrigues, C. (2022). Six critical questions for teaching justice-based environmental sustainability (JBES) in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2114338

Misiaszek, G. W. (2022). Ecopedagogy: Freirean teaching to disrupt socio-environmental injustices, anthropocentric dominance, and unsustainability of the Anthropocene. Educational Philosophy & Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2022.2130044

Misiaszek, G. W. (2022). Contested terrains of environmental pedagogies: Comparing ecopedagogy, education for sustainable development (ESD) and environmental education. In L. I. Misiaszek, R. F. Arnove, & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Emergent trends in comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local (5th ed., pp. 23-39). Rowman & Littlefield Publications. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538145579/Emergent-Trends-in-Comparative-Education-The-Dialectic-of-the-Global-and-the-Local

Misiaszek, G. W. (2022). Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development. In A. A. Abdi & G. W. Misiaszek (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education (pp. 301-317). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_17

Misiaszek, G. W., Misiaszek, L. I., & Iftekhar, S. N. (2022). “Hard spaces” of Global Citizenship Education: A comparative analysis through ecopedagogical, linguistic, and feminist lenses. In C. Lütge, T. Merse, & P. Rauschert (Eds.), Global citizenship in foreign language education : concepts, practices, connections (pp. 201-225). Routledge.

Misiaszek, G. W., & Iftekhar, S. N. (2022). Ecopedagogy: teaching for socio-environmental civic actions through local, global and planetary lenses. In R. Desjardins & S. Wiksten (Eds.), Handbook of Civic Engagement and Education(pp. 94-105). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800376953

Misiaszek, G. W., Epstein-HaLevi, D. Y., Reindl, S., & Jolly, T. L. (2022). Ecopedagogy Disrupting Postdigital Divides of (Neo)Coloniality, (Eco)Racism, and Anthropocentricism: A Case Study. In P. Jandrić & D. R. Ford (Eds.), Postdigital Ecopedagogies : Genealogies, Contradictions, and Possible Futures (pp. 121-145). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97262-2_7

Misiaszek, G. W. (2021). Ecopedagogical literacy of a pandemic: Teaching to critically read the politics of COVID-19 with environmental issues. The Journal of Environmental Education, 52(5), 358-369. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2021.1981206Misiaszek, G. W. (2021). An ecopedagogical, ecolinguistical reading of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): what we have learned from Paulo Freire. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2011208

Misiaszek, G. W. (2021). Editorial: De-distancing ‘us’ from the rest of Earth: ecopedagogical analysis and approaches. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2021.1880333

Misiaszek, G. W. (2020). Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Teaching for Planetary Justice and Global Sustainable Development. London: Bloomsbury. (within the Book Series: Bloomsbury Critical Education; Series Editor: Peter Mayo (Professor and Department Head, University of Malta, Faculty of Education)) ISBN: 9781350083813; www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ecopedagogy-9781350083813;

Misiaszek, G. W. (2020). Countering post-truths through ecopedagogical literacies: Teaching to critically read “development” and “sustainable development”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(7), 747-758. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1680362

Misiaszek, G. W. (2020). Ecopedagogy: teaching critical literacies of ‘development’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘sustainable development’. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(5), 615-632. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1586668

Peters, M.A., Rizvi, F., McCulloch, G., Gibbs, P., Gorur, R., Hong, M., Hwang, Y., Zipin, L., Brennan, M., Robertson, S., Quay, J., Malbon, J., Taglietti, D., Barnett, R., Wang, C., McLaren, P., Rima Apple, Papastephanou, M., Burbules, N., Jackson, L., Jalote, P., Kalantzis, M., Cope, B., Fataar, A., Conroy, J., Misiaszek, G.W., Biesta, G., Jandrić, P., Choo, S., Apple, M., Stone, L., Tierney, R., Tesar, M., Besley, T. & Misiaszek, L.I. (2020). Reimagining the new pedagogical possibilities for universities post-Covid-19. (Misiaszek, G.W. COVID-19 foreshadowing Earth’s environmental tipping point: Education’s transformation needed to avoid the ledge) Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1777655

Misiaszek, G. W. (2020). Reconstructing Shallow Environmental Pedagogies into Critical, Transformative Environmental Learning Spaces for Praxis. In A. Abdi (Ed.), Critical Theorizations of Education (pp. 58-72). The Netherlands: Brill. (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004447820_005)

Misiaszek, G. W. (2020). Locating and diversifying modernity: Deconstructing knowledges to counter Development for a few. In M. A. Peters, T. Besley, P. Jandrić, & X. Zhu (Eds.), Knowledge Socialism – The Rise of Peer Production: Collegiality, Collaboration, and Collective Intelligence. Singapore: Springer Nature. (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8126-3_13)

Misiaszek, G. W., & Torres, C., A. (2019). Chapter five: The missing chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In C. Torres, A. (Ed.), Wiley handbook of Paulo Freire. New Jersey: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119236788.ch25

Misiaszek, G. W. (2018). Educating the global environmental citizen: Understanding ecopedagogy in local and global contexts. New York: Routledge. (within the Book Series: Global Citizenship Education, Globalization and the Politics of Equity and Inclusion; Series Editor: Carlos Alberto Torres (UCLA Distinguished Professor of Education, UNESCO Chair of Global Learning and Global Citizenship)); ISBN: paperback (9780367887629), hardback (9781138700895); eBook (9781315204345) www.routledge.com/Educating-the-Global-Environmental-Citizen-Understanding-Ecopedagogy-in/Misiaszek/p/book/9781138700895

Misiaszek, G. W. (2018). A critical scholar’s journey in China: A brief Freirean analysis of insider-outsider tensions. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(12). https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1434075 

Misiaszek, G. W. (2016). Ecopedagogy as an element of citizenship education: The dialectic of global/local spheres of citizenship and critical environmental pedagogies. International Review of Education, 1-21. doi:10.1007/s11159-016-9587-0. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-016-9587-0

Misiaszek, G. W. (2015). Ecopedagogy and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization: Connections between Environmental and Global Citizenship Education to Save the Planet.  European Journal of Education. 50(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12138

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About ecopedagogy
Books

what is Ecopedagogy?

Ecopedagogy is essentially literacy education – to read and re-read humans’ acts of environmental violence – coinciding with its popular education roots as reinventions of the pedagogies of the Brazilian pedagogue and philosopher Paulo Freire.  Ecopedagogies are grounded in critical thinking and transformability to construct learning with increased social and environmental justice as the ultimate goal.  Rooted in critical theories and originating from popular education models of Latin America, ecopedagogy is centered on better understanding the connections between human acts of environmental violence and social violence to cause injustices/oppressions, domination of the rest of Nature, and planetary unsustainability.  Teaching to understand the social aspects of environmental issues, from local to global perspectives and knowledges[i], as well as through the scholarship of multiple disciplines, is essential to determine actions for lasting changes toward environmental wellbeing and planetary sustainability. (excerpt from 2020 book)

Note: The plural form of knowledges signifies that individuals have multiple, and often contested, understandings which are culture-based (e.g., local knowledges, indigenous knowledges) and those emergent from dominant ideologies.