Rethinking environmental pedagogies: ecopedagogical deconstruction for reconstructing critical, transformative environmental learning spaces for praxis

• In Event: Environmental and Sustainability SIG Highlighted Session: Educating beyond the human: Reconsidering the purpose and practice of international education in complex socio-ecological systems

Proposal

Social injustices from environmental violence and planetary unsustainability will continue within normalized ideologies of (1) neoliberalism that values individualized profit without concern for environmental impact (Gadotti, 2008c; Gadotti & Torres, 2009; Postma, 2006), and (2) socio-historical superiority of one population over another (e.g., neo-/colonialisms, globalizations from above, racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, homophobia). Environmental pedagogies, including Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development, frequently teach within these oppressive-grounded ideologies that reproduce and intensity social oppressions and environmental unsustainability (Author 2011, 2015; Gutiérrez & Prado, 2008; Kahn, 2010) by hiding the connections between environmental and social violence (Author 2011; Gadotti, 2008b; Gadotti & Torres, 2009) and exploiting Nature under the guise of “development” (Author, 2018, 2019, forthcoming 2020). In the same vein, citizenships (local to global citizenship) within these ideologies have deepened the “us” versus “them” rather than connectedness for praxis for socio-environmental justice/sustainability in an increasingly globalized world. This paper will discuss the need for ecopedagogy that centers democratic dialogue that problematize, through frameworks of critical theories, how these ideologies teach “citizenship”, “development”, and “sustainable development” to systematically justify unsustainable environmental violence. As such, dialogue within ecopedagogical spaces counter these ideologies touting these terms as ahistorical, apolitical, and singular in definition and scope. Ecopedagogies are grounded in popular, critical theories as reinventions of the work of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire to deconstruct the connections between environmental and social violence (Author 2011, 2015 Gadotti, 2008a, 2008c; Gutiérrez & Prado, 2008; Kahn, 2010). Ecopedagogical spaces include dialogue to critically deconstruct academic disciplines constructing environmental pedagogies, including the socio-historical backgrounds and theories they rest upon. Working through the work of post-colonial scholars such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2007, 2016, 2018) and Raewyn Connell (2007, 2013) on epistemologies of the South to counter pedagogies and associated research based on epistemologies of the North, the paper will also deconstruct how these discussions are essential in ecopedagogical spaces and in the construction of the spaces themselves.

Author

• Greg W Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University