Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy

by Michael A. Peters (editor), Tina Besley (Editor)

This collection is the first book devoted to Paulo Freire’s ongoing global legacy to provide an analysis of the continuing relevance and significance of Freire’s work and the impact of his global legacy. The book contains essays by some of the world’s foremost Freire scholars – McLaren, Darder, Roberts, and others – as well as chapters by scholars and activists, including the Maori scholars Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Russell Bishop, who detail their work with the indigenous people of Aotearoa-New Zealand. The book contains a foreword by Nita Freire as well as chapters from scholars around the world including Latin America, Asia, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. With a challenging introduction from the editors, Michael A. Peters and Tina Besley, this much-awaited addition to the Freire archive is highly recommended reading for all students and scholars interested in Freire, global emancipatory politics, and the question of social justice in education.

630 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 23, 2014

About the author

Michael A Peters is Distinguished Professor at Beijing Normal University, China, and Emritus Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He remains attached to the University of Waikato as a research professor affiliate in the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research. He was professor of Education at the University of Waikato for seven years (2011-2018).

He is the executive editor of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and editor of three international ejournals, Policy Futures in Education, E-Learning and Digital Media, and Knowledge Cultures.

His interests are in education, philosophy and social policy and is a lifelong Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Humanities. His research interests are in educational philosophy, theory and policy studies with a focus on the significance of both contemporary philosophers (Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger) and the movements of poststructuralism, critical theory and analytic philosophy to the framing of educational theory and practice.

He is also interested in philosophical and political economy questions of knowledge production and consumption. His major current projects include work on distributed knowledge, learning and publishing systems, and ‘open education’.

He has written over eighty books, including The Global Financial Crisis and the Restructuring of Education (2015), Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy (2015) both with Tina Besley, Education Philosophy and Politics: Selected Works (2011); Education, Cognitive Capitalism and Digital Labour (2011), with Ergin Bulut; and Neoliberalism and After? Education, Social Policy and the Crisis of Capitalism (2011).

He has acted as an advisor to governments on these and related matters in Scotland, NZ, South Africa and the EU. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 2010 and awarded honorary doctorates by State University of New York (SUNY) in 2012 and University of Aalborg in 2015.