It does so as part of a future-oriented, ecological and political vision that radically opposes the globalization of ideologies such as neoliberalism and imperialism, while also attempting to foment forms of critical ecoliteracy.
[3] One of ecopedagogy's goals is the realization of culturally relevant forms of knowledge grounded in normative concepts such as sustainability, planetarity (i.e. identifying as an earthling) and biophilia (i.e. love of all life).
[1] The ecopedagogy movement began in a Latin American educational context, growing out of discussions at the second Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.
[6] It is critical of mainstream representations of nature that are potentially informed by racist, sexist, and classist values,[1] and wary of the tendency of "greenwashing" of environmental terminology.
[1] Ecopedagogy points out that environmental education is often tethered to state and corporate-sponsored science and social studies standards or fails to articulate the political necessity for widespread understanding of the unsustainable nature of modern lifestyles.
However, he was also critical of popular environmentalist pedagogy attempting to mobilize people's sentiments for solutions to problems such as global warming, hunger, and rainforest destruction.
This is a different idea from the way the term and concept is being defined and utilized in critical education circles today, though it is potentially of great importance for the future development of the ecopedagogy movement on the whole.
Bowers, argues that if ecopedagogy (and the larger critical pedagogy of Freire and Gadotti) were universally adopted, it would contribute to the hegemonic spread of Western culture and systems, thereby choking out non-Western ways of thinking, viewing, and interacting with the human and built environments.
Here, critics argue that in valuing individualism, ecopedagogy fails to attend to traditional eco-centered cultures' already deep connection to the non-human world.
For example, a study conducted with 10-year-old children in West Scotland concluded that interactive dramatic education was successful in engaging students in ecological, social, and political dimensions of global problems such as solid waste and deforestation.
"[32] Greta Gaard outlines the necessity for children's environmental literature to encompass the following core aspects of ecopedagogy:[28] The question of technology had become increasingly pertinent.