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.