Brookfield earned his Ph.D. from the University of Leicester in 1980 and wrote a thesis on independent adult learning.
His twenty first book titled Teaching Well: Understanding Key Dynamics of Learning Centered Classrooms was published in 2023 by Routledge, co-authored by Juergen Rudolph & Shannon Tan.
In Recent years Brookfield has focused much of his scholarship on issues relating to white supremacy and how this intersects with adult education and critical reflection.
This work particularly emphasizes the importance of addressing power and systemic racism in our institutions and classrooms many of which remain predominantly white.
His work has been translated into several languages including Korean, German, Finnish, Japanese, Danish, Polish, Persian and Chinese.