2020, Bloomsbury (Portuguese translation coming in 2023)
within 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
2018, Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
with 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.
Preface by Carlos Alberto Torres (Educating the Global Environmental Citizen: Understanding Ecopedagogy in Local and Global Contexts, Routledge, 2018)
Educating the Global Environmental Citizen is a tour de force. Rarely we find a book which contains such systematic level of analysis of a topic so relevant for sustainability of the planet and the future of cosmopolitan democracies promoting global citizenship education. Rarely does one finds a book with the level of detail, both in analyses and criticism, that this book brings to the reader. This book is a state-of-the-art analysis and from a critical perspective of the connections between ecopedagogy, sustainability, and global citizenship education.
Inspired by the work of Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy, Dr. Greg Misiaszek provides an analysis of sustainability and its connections with citizenship which is clearly documented and politically powerful in addressing socio-environmental issues. In addition to his path-breaking work on ecopedagogy from a Freirean perspective, the author is very well grounded in comparative education. This combined expertise accounts for Misiaszek’s ability to inspect the topic through case studies, providing evidence-based research underscoring his theses. Considering his intellectual resources, it is not surprisingly that Misiaszek endorses a postcolonial tradition while inspecting the workings of globalization and how it impacts on a planet deeply affected by predatory cultures. Armed with the munition of analyses around Critical Race Theories, gender neoliberalism, Freire, Indigenous Knowledges, and media literacy, this book offers a cornucopia of insights into one of the most complex issues that our generation and generations to come will have to confront: how to survive and prosper in a planet that is reaching the limits of its habitability.
Yet, it is not only the well documented technical analysis and bibliographical review that makes this book a tour de force, but also the epistemological principles that provides reach nutrients for our author. Like all critical theorists, Misiaszek holds it impossible to fully dissociate the normative from the analytical in constructing scientific thought, thus the importance of the notion of a good society to guide varied intellectual explorations. Similarly, Misiaszek doesn’t deny the political role of education, for what Paulo Freire called the politicity of education. Finally, Misiaszek’s book is not detached from historicity of thought and policy prescriptions emerging from such theorizing, as not all social constructions are equal in terms of logical configuration, methodological rigor, or solid empirical proof.
The theme of ecology and sustainability, which Freirians called ‘eco-pedagogy’ was a theme Freire discovered late in life despite the fact that it was, historically, a central theme of the utopian socialist tradition. The old master ran out of time and was unable to formulate his analysis of planetary citizenship, something that has become an indispensable theme in all discussions about global citizenship, another surprisingly liminal concern for septuagenarian Freire. It is ironic that, although his life experience, thought, and renown all enlarged to global proportions, Freire did not deal critically with the theme of globalization and neoliberalism until the very end of his life. Fortunately, one of Freire’s closest associate, and Director of the Paulo Freire Institute of São Paulo, philosopher Moacir Gadotti, and to some extent my own work and some of my own students’ work, have initiated a new path of reinventing Freire inspired in Gadotti’s important contribution Pedagogia da Terra. Jointly with Gadotti, amply quoted in this book, and in the spirit of the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, a whole generation of new Freirean scholars like Greg Misiaszek has come along. In this spirit, this book is, in many respects, an intelligent and well documented reinvention of Freire and ecopedagogy.
The implementation of the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) in 2012 by the then UN Secretary Ban-Ki Moon opened a new chapter in the global conversation about access and quality education, two key pillars of the GEFI. But it is the third pillar of global citizenship education which emerges as a formidable principle of sustainability. As a central pillar in this program, global citizenship education (GCE) is identified as a central component of social transformation. GCE is predicated as a resource to enhance education for all, quality of education, global peace, sustainability of the planet, and the defense of global commons; as such, it dovetails very nicely with the principles of sustainability and the defense of the planet. I am convinced, as Misiaszek argues, that GCE as a pillar of sustainable development is one of the answers to the challenges affecting global peace, such as growing inequality; global poverty; neoliberal globalization; banking education; and predatory cultures destroying the environment and our planet.
Like most critical theorists, I insist continuously in the need to criticize and celebrate at the same time. Today I celebrate this insightful book which opens up so many avenues for thinking and praxis. Educating the Global Citizen will guide us in the defense of the planet and in our struggle for a better world; a world, in the words of Freire, in which it will be easier to love.
partial Series Editor’s Preface by Peter Mayo (Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Teaching for Planetary Justice and Global Sustainable Development, Bloomsbury, 2020)
… This specific book in the series, by Greg William Misiaszek, highlights the ever so pertinent area of enquiry and critical education that is Ecopedagogy. It is a term which echoes the figure of Paulo Freire and the work of his followers with regard to the Carta da Terra, the Earth Charter. It focuses on a concept of citizenship that is planetary which brings to mind an earlier trail blazing book by Francisco Gutierrez and Cruz Prado (Gutierrez and Prado, 1999). In typical Freirean fashion, Greg William Misiaszek helps us read the earth and the word to stem the culture of environmental violence and degradation, rebuffing its waves and countering them with a pedagogy that underscores the interconnectedness of everything in life. The effects of corporate models of production and consumption are being felt through climate change which is making life unliveable for people located in such areas as the southern parts of Africa. Heat waves, famine, disappearance of resources and wars over access to them, the further spread of diseases such as malaria, will continue to lead to further massive waves of migration across the planet. While capital moves freely, these victims have their mobility curtailed by all sorts of legally forged manacles, lending a specific meaning to the concept of the carceral state. The urge to live, albeit frugally, makes the victims of this environmental violence risk life and limb further. Many survivors of hazards along the way (deserts, raging seas) are driven into many forms of human slavery, perhaps still clinging to that forlorn hope that keeps them striving to seek that enchanting Eldorado or that oasis of peace where their human dignity will be restored.
In the meantime, the widespread misery and degradation, the underbelly of an omnivorous global capitalism, is part of a vicious process connecting different parts of the world, where excessive environmental violence in the West is re-echoed elsewhere and falls disproportionally on people from the Global South. All animate beings are connected with any effect in one corner of the globe having its ramifications for living elsewhere. The book therefore consists of a plea to strengthen human-earth relations in the interest of sustainable development worldwide . We are all relational beings living and acting in concert with others, human and non-human within an ecological system which we have borrowed from future generations. There is so much to put right, before handing Planet Earth back to future generations, and there is little time left in which to do it. This book calls for a sense of urgency in so far as Ecopedagogy is concerned.
Foreword: White Supremacy, White Philosophy, and and Rewriting of History
Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University
Section One: General critical theoretical perspectives and philosophies of education
Chapter 1: Critical theories of education: An introduction
Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University; Janna Popoff, Beijing Normal University; Ali Abdi, University of British Columbia
Chapter 2: Critical theory and the transformation of education in the new millennium
Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles; Steve Gennaro, York University
Chapter 3: The philosophy and politics of educating emotions
Liz Jackson, Education University of Hong Kong
Chapter 4: African philosophies of education: Colonialist deconstructions and critical reconstructionist possibilities
Ali A. Abdi, University of British Columbia
Section Two: Critical race theories of education
Chapter 5: Educating for critical race and anti-colonial intersections
George J. Sefa Dei (Nana Sefa Atweneboah I), University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE); Asna Adhami, University of Toronto, OISE
Chapter 6: Critical Social foundations of education: Advancing human rights and transformative justice education in teacher preparation
Magnus O. Bassey, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)
Chapter 7: Students with disabilities in British Columbia’s (Canada) K to 12 education system: A critical disability and intersectional perspective
Bathseba Opini, University of British Columbia
Section Three: Critical international/global citizenship education
Chapter 8: Contesting Canadian Exceptionalism in the Internationalization of Higher Education: A Critical Perspective
Shibao Guo, University of Calgary; Yan Guo, University of Calgary
Chapter 9: Global citizenship education (GCE) for critical consciousness: Emancipatory potentials and entrenched realities in South Korea
Hyungryeol Kim, Seoul National University; Sung-Sang Yoo, Seoul National University
Chapter 10: Diversifying schools with global and Indigenous knowledge: Inclusion of internationally educated teachers (IETs) in schools and teacher education programs
Chouaib El Bouhali, University of Alberta
Chapter 11: Rebuilding the Connection Between Politics1 and practices of Democratic Education in China: Critical Reflections
Wenchao Zhang, Beijing Union University
Chapter 12: Teaching social justice amidst violence: Youth and enacted curricula in Canada, Bangladesh, and México
Kathy Bickmore, OISE – University of Toronto; Rim Fathallah, OISE – University of Toronto
Section Four: Critical pedagogy/critical literacy studies in education
Chapter 13: The Indigenous imaginary and tertiary institutions
Robert J. Tierney, University of British Columbia; Robert V. Morgan, Wollotuka Institute, University of Newcastle (Australia)
Chapter 14: Critical education, social democratic education, revolutionary Marxist education
David Hill, Middlesex University
Chapter 15: Critical perspectives for educational leadership and policy in higher education
Candace Brunette-Debassige, Western University (Canada); Melody Viczko, Western University (Canada)
Chapter 16: Critical pedagogy in language and STEM Education: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education
Zehlia Babaci-Wilhite, University of California, Berkeley
Chapter 17: Critical environmental pedagogies to disrupt falsely touted sustainable Development
Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University
Section Five: Critical media/information studies and education
Chapter 18: Postdigital critical pedagogy
Petar Jandrić, Zagreb University of Applied Sciences; Sarah Hayes, University of Wolverhampton
Chapter 19: Contemporary critical library and information studies: Ethos and ethics
Toni Samek, University of Alberta
Chapter 20: Critical methodologies and an art-based method of research in higher education institutions
Janna Popoff, Beijing Normal University
Chapter 21: Rise of a ‘managerial demiurge’: Critical analysis of the digitalization of education
Juha Suoranta, Tampere University; Marko Teräs, Tampere University of Applied Sciences; Hanna Teräs, Tampere University of Applied Sciences
Section Six: Critical community-engaged learning/research
Chapter 22: Critical comprehensive peace education: Finding a pedagogical nexus for personal, structural, and cultural change
Tony Jenkins, Georgetown University
Chapter 23: Showing up for the rat race: Beyond human capital models of higher education
Alison Taylor, University of British Columbia
Chapter 24: The challenges of doing radical pedagogy in social movements in South Africa
Salma Ismail, University of Cape Town
Section Seven: Critical perspectives on science and mathematics education
Chapter 25: Decolonizing science education in Africa: Curriculum and pedagogy
Samson Madera Nashon, University of British Columbia
Chapter 26: Indigenous epistemologies and decolonized sustainable livelihoods in Africa
Edward Shizha, Wilfrid Laurier University
Chapter 27: Centering race, racism, and Black learners in mathematics education: A critical race theory perspective
Julius Davis, Bowie State University
Chapter 28: Mobility of Syrian-Canadian students and continuity of math education: a comparative curriculum mapping approach
Dania Wattar, University of Toronto; Emmanuelle Le Pichon, University of Toronto
Section Eight: Critical gender/feminist studies in education
Chapter 29: Transforming sub-Saharan African universities: Transnational collaborations at the intersections of gender as a viable pathway?
Philomina Okeke, University of Alberta
Chapter 30: Revisiting Francophone sub-Saharan Africa’s Eurocentric education system through a decolonial feminist’s lens
Gertrude Mianda, York University
Section Nine: Critical Indigenous and Southern epistemologies of education
Chapter 31: Critical theory as lived meaning: Exploring anti-racist practice in post-secondary education
Derek Tannis, University of Saskatchewan
Chapter 32: Critical Adult Education in the (Neo)colonies: Racial/Colonial Capitalist and Social Movement Ontologies of Land
Dip Kapoor, University of Alberta
Chapter 33: Doing Southern Theory: Shinto, self-negation and comparative education
Keita Takayama, Kyoto University