Educating the Global Environmental Citizen

Understanding Ecopedagogy in Local and Global Contexts

Greg William Misiaszek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351790734
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

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.

1 Ecopedagogy

Teaching for Critical Environmental Literacies

Reinvented from the work of Paulo Freire (2004, 2000), ecopedagogy is grounded on action-oriented teaching through democratic dialogue to better understand how environmental ills oppress people, societies, populations, and everything on the planet. The term grounded is used to signify the basis of critical pedagogies—that teaching is constructed from and continually focuses upon trying to understand who suffers, why they suffer, and the politics of the causes of suffering (Apple, Au, and Gandin 2009; Gadotti 1996). In the case of ecopedagogy, it is suffering from environmental ills which are focused upon. Ecopedagogies are Freirean-grounded teaching which centers humans’ harmful actions on the nature as causes and effects of social oppressions, and vice versa. In this chapter, I will argue, along with other Freireans (Gadotti 2008a, 2008d; Gadotti and Torres 2009), that ecopedagogies are essential to end socio-environmental injustices, because their teaching is constructed from the goal to better understand the injustices to determine actions to end them (i.e., praxis).

The humanizing of education is essential (Freire 2000), including the humanization of environment pedagogies. For example, questioning that economics, especially within capitalistic and/or neoliberal frameworks, does not satisfy human needs or give pleasures but rather further separates our needs from those of the rest of nature (Gadotti and Torres 2009; Freire 1997). Ecopedagogy, as a Freirean reinvention of environmental pedagogies, is grounded in all peoples’ and all of Earth’s needs as the criteria of both what is development and sustainability in determining development.

Politics, in a few of the previous sentences, as well as throughout this book, is from the critical theories perspective which is complicated but can be somewhat simplified to what are the influences of environmentally violent actions, largely by deconstructing the power dynamics of why such actions occur. This deconstruction is with the realization that politics are often structurally hidden by those who benefit from ignorance of the connections to the suffering. Ecopedagogues teach students to deconstruct environmental issues within the “classroom” and provide them the necessary tools to deconstruct environmental issues outside of the classroom;¹ however, teaching, learning, and the classroom’s construction are democratically done by both teachers and students.

Ecopedagogies are historically rooted in popular education movements of Latin America, emergent from the pedagogy of Paulo Freire which problem-poses socio-environmental connections for more thorough understandings of their causes and negative effects. The distinction of ecopedagogy, as reinvented from the work of Paulo Freire (i.e., Freirean), differentiates ecopedagogy from other critical environmental pedagogies. Problem-posing in ecopedagogical spaces includes dialogue on how and why teaching socio-environmental issues is often systematically ignored, as well as the goal of constructing possible solutions, and actions toward those solutions, inside and outside of current economic, social, and political systems. There are two important aspects to such dialogue. First is that “outside” the current systems mean that ecopedagogical discussions are not limited to societies’ current social structures and normative ideologies. Second is that transformation of the current systems themselves for increased socio-environmental justice is also part of ecopedagogical dialogue. These are both key tenets of Freirean Pedagogy.

Problem-posing the needs for larger transformational change within all aspects of societies is central to ecopedagogical dialogue. This does not belittle individual and local environmentally good actions from teaching, but here must also be the realization of the needs for larger global transformational actions, in addition to local actions. The ecopedagogical tenet of holistic transformability is something that is lacking in many environmental pedagogies for various political reasons, which will be discussed throughout this book, in which environmental actions are largely constrained within current socio-polity-economic systems. Ecopedagogical spaces are ones in which both teacher(s) and students problem-pose possible actions both within and outside of these systems, questioning what are the needed changes for the systems themselves.

Freire (2000) discussed that needed dialogical teaching and learning only occurs in safe learning spaces where students are able to express their authentic voices and when everyone truly listens to and understands each other. The key word in the previous sentence for ecopedagogues is safe, meaning that students are free to express their own perspectives, understandings, and knowledges without fearing reprisal from other students or from the teacher(s), including using her/his grade-granting authority. It is only in safe learning spaces that authentic dialogue can emerge. This does not mean there will not be disagreements in learning spaces; conflict is what makes us human and builds upon our learning (Apple 2004), but not violence emerging from conflict, which is what makes us de-humanized (Harris and Morrison 2003). Violence can take many forms, including verbal, physical, and sexual. Safe learning spaces are free from violence, not conflict.

In general, all environmental pedagogies such as Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) have similar goals, discussed in the previous chapter. However, many pedagogies limit the depth and width of teaching socio-environmental issues, as well the possibilities of the extent, reach, and depth of transformation needed. Throughout this chapter and book overall, I argue that non-critical environmental pedagogies frequently are often more harmful than beneficial to ending environmental ills because the causes and effects are superficially taught by filtering out learning that counters normalized, dominant ideologies and current social structures. Such filtering is not accidental but rather structurally systematic with many educational practitioners, including environmental educators, not conscious of their acts of reproducing socio-environmental injustices.

This chapter expands on the argument for the need of environmental pedagogies to teach ecopedagogical literacies to help students “read and re-read” (i.e., code and recode (Freire 2000)) environmental problems and then reflect upon actions needed to save the planet from various perspectives, with specific attention to perspectives of those who struggle the most with the problem. Described will be the goal of giving students the tools they need for ecopedagogical reading of socio-environmental issues. As a stand-alone pedagogy and as a pedagogical tool within EE and ESD models, this chapter expresses how ecopedagogies are essential in constructing literacies to read environmental issues through problem-posing education of the environment, such as the dis/connections within and between development, sustainability, and environmental well-being. In short, I do not argue for the need for ecopedagogies to replace all other environmental pedagogies but rather to add value to them. The last section discusses why many environmental pedagogies fail.

Ecopedagogical Literacy for Consciousization and Praxis

Ecopedagogical teaching is for consciousization (conscientização) of societal structures that sustain socio-environmental oppressions. This is aligned with what Freire eloquently described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) as critical literacy of social oppressions. In essence, all environmental teaching is literacy education to read environmental problems, but ecopedagogy specifically focuses on critical reading of the core reasons for their occurrence, which are often structurally hidden, along with their full negative effects. As transformative centered, ecopedagogical teaching through discussions that problematize what actions are needed both within societies’ current social, economic, and political structures, as well as necessary actions to transform the structures themselves. It is important to note that transformation here and throughout the book indicates change that counters current structures and normative ideologies, often paradigm-shifting, and is lasting rather than temporary changes, needing transformational action determined reflective needs of socio-environmental justice (i.e., praxis). Ecopedagogical reading of socio-environmental oppressions frequently counter other education of the environment models, which often fatalistically teach the impossibility to solve these oppressions and that radical solutions outside of current social structures are fanciful. Without teaching for ecopedagogical literacy full of hope for transformational possibilities, environmental pedagogies become tools of socio-environmental reproduction rather than for leading to necessary transformational actions to save Earth.

Ecopedagogies are praxis-oriented; ecopedagogical literacy is for the emergence of resulting effective actions. Further described and exemplified throughout this book, praxis is critical reflection through theories to determine necessary actions by determining barriers (i.e., termed limit situations by Freire (2000)) to narrow the gaps between current oppressions and utopic “better worlds,” and determining the actions need towards these “better worlds” (Held 1980; Gadotti 1996). Stemming from Freire’s idea that all humans are unfinished beings and that education should be transformative for both teachers and learners (Freire 2000), ecopedagogy must be transformative to everyone and be utopian oriented rather than fatalistic. Freire explains this utopian need through the constructs of citizenship, as follows:

The ability to observe, to compare, and to evaluate, in order to choose, through deciding, how one is to intervene in the life of the city and thus exercise one’s citizenship, arises then as a fundamental competency. If my presence in history is not neutral, I must accept its political nature as critically as possible. If, in reality, I am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather to transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a certain dream or vision for it, I must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it.

(Freire 2004, 7)

Utopian education is rooted in the Freirean notion that education must allow students to dream of possible utopias, countering fatalistic educational models in which large societal transformation is impossible and “alternative” thinking is delegitimized and portrayed as useless (Freire 1992; Torres 2007; Teodoro and Torres 2007).

These barriers can be seen as what Freire (2000) termed as limit situations to be determined in learning spaces and Freirean praxis as overcoming these barriers. As Freirean spaces of learning, ecopedagogical teaching has both students and teacher(s) democratically discuss how to increase socio-environmental justice for the world, all inclusively without setting limits on transformation, whether it be social, governance, and/or economic. Determining the limit situations (i.e., the barriers) of achieving socio-environmental justice needs deepened and widened understanding of the politics of them being barriers to a utopic, socio-environmentally just Earth. The determined actions are not limited by current societal systems, but rather all-inclusive socio-environmental justice. In other words, utilizing Freire’s pedagogical practice of limit situations to determine points of resistance to ending socio-environmental oppressions helps determine actions toward overcoming these resistance points to emerge from ecopedagogies.

Ecopedagogical literacy includes determining what we do not know. There are inherent fluid limitations of understanding because it is impossible know all the local to global contexts and politics of environmental actions, as well as all the ecological effects upon Earth’s complex ecosystems. The ability to determine current limitations of understanding is essential critical analysis of socio-environmental injustices because it guides to what needs to be learned next. This ecopedagogical analysis is an endless process of critically determining what needs to be understood next, because once that is learned, it will without question lead to additional limitations, and so on.

This difficulty of determining these issues inherently makes ecopedagogical teaching difficult and learning as hard work with rigorous analysis as essential. This was emphasized by Freire in the difficulty inherent in critical literacy, but necessary for fuller understanding and to determine what next is necessary to know:

Reading, as study, is a difficult, even painful, process at times, but always a pleasant one as well. It implies that the reader delve deep into the text, in order to learn its most profound meaning. The more we do this exercise, in a disciplined way, conquering any desire to flee the reading, the more we prepare ourselves for making future reading less difficult.

(Freire 1992, 63)

Once again, I will re-emphasize the need for ecopedagogical literacy, in that it is impossible to know about all aspects of an environmental oppression; however, teaching should focus on helping to build on students’ capabilities to be able to critically analyze socio-environmental issues. Without needing to be stated, students also help the building of teachers’ critical ecopedagogical literacy.

Ecopedagogues teach to critically investigate (i.e., deconstruct) environmental issues through diverse social perspectives, with the goal of action to counter socio-environmental injustices. Teaching to critically determine the limitations of socio-environmental understanding is also essential to democratically construct the learning space itself, including the curriculum (Horton, Kohl, and Kohl 1998; Horton et al. 1990). Through the analysis of what needs to be known next for more thorough socio-environmental understandings, ecopedagogical learning spaces are democratically constructed. This is not to state that ecopedagogical spaces begin without a curriculum, but that the curriculum provides flexibility for adaption for both how essential topics are learned, as well as additional topics to be added. The ecopedagogue must also include, with students, sources of narratives outside of the learning space, with the necessary reflection of their curricula selection to represent diversity. In the increasingly globalized world, it is important that ecopedagogical curricula represents the diversity of the planet, with the realization that global actions are essential to end socio-environmental oppressions.

Deepening and widening readings of socio-environmental issues for praxis is the goal of ecopedagogy rather than to gain absolute environmental knowledges. Students (and teachers) will certainly have more overall knowledge of environmental issues in ecopedagogical spaces; however, it is the ability to widen and deepen critical reading abilities of environmental issues, politics, and what are next issues necessary to learn to better determine their actions towards ending socio-environmental oppressions. Much of this comes down to developing students’ ecopedagogical literacy abilities. Evaluation and assessment of ecopedagogical teaching and learning should not focus on the amount of socio-environmental knowledge attained by students, analogous to banking education evaluation methods, but rather focus on students’ critical literacy abilities as described here and throughout this book. Educational systems continue to largely focus evaluation on positivistic outcomes of quantity of knowledge gained rather than the critical literacy and thinking abilities of students with the knowledge gained and determining what additional knowledge is necessary. Rather than evaluation of abilities to transform the world for all-inclusive socio-environmental justice, we grade on how well they can apolitically describe what is happening. If teaching is to transform the world to become a better world, within the balance of Earth holistically, evaluation must show this and not this as ancillary.

Environmental pedagogues will likely be environmentalists and will likely teach accordingly, which poses the question how to teach for critical ecopedagogical literacy rather than what to think, which would be environmentalism.

The “ultimate” aim of environmental education is “for each school learner to have formulated a responsible attitude towards the sustainable development of Planet Earth, an appreciation of its beauty and an assumption of an environmental ethic.”

(Neal and Palmer 2003, 29; Bell 2004, 37)

With the ultimate goal of environmentalism written by Derek Bell’s (2004) quote there is an impending question of how can environmental teaching be multi-perspective, including anti-environmental perspectives? As Freire (1998, 2000) decl...