Also in September, Toronto-based Chopbox Magazine created the Peter L. McLaren Foundation for Social Change.
The foundation is the second to bear McLaren's name.
Date: January 16, 2007
Contact: Shaena Engle ( engle@gseis.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-206-5951
Peter L. McLaren, UCLA professor of education in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, has received two prestigious honors for his international work in the area of critical pedagogy.
Venezuela's Ministry of Higher Education recently inaugurated the Peter McLaren Chair for the Study of Critical Pedagogy (La Cátedra Peter McLaren de Pedagogía Crítica) at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, and Toronto-based Chopbox Magazine has created the Peter L. McLaren Foundation for Social Change. Both the chair and foundation were established in September 2006.
The McLaren Chair is part of the formal program of the Bolivarian University, consisting of a permanent course that serves as an umbrella for seminars, study and lectures focusing on McLaren's work.
"I am thrilled to receive such a prestigious honor," McLaren said. "I feel that all of my work as a socialist scholar can now be integrated in a revolutionary course that will initiate dialogues and address critical needs in the area of educational advancement."
The Peter L. McLaren Foundation for Social Change (PLM Worldwide), the second foundation bearing McLaren's name, is dedicated to empowering global youth and will bring students, parents, activists and professionals together to focus on urban and rural education issues.
In 2005, a group of scholars in Tijuana, Mexico, established La Fundación McLaren de Pedagogía Crítica to promote McLaren's work throughout Mexico and to develop projects in critical pedagogy and popular education.
Known as one of the leading critical pedagogists in North America, McLaren has written and edited approximately 40 books and monographs on critical pedagogy and multicultural education. His book "Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education" was named one of the 12 most significant writings by foreign authors in the field of educational theory, policy and practice by the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.
McLaren lectures around the world, and his work has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew, Polish, German, Catalan, and French. He has presented distinguished lectures at a number of North American universities and continues to speak and write from a trans-disciplinary perspective in the areas of critical pedagogy, multicultural education, critical ethnography and critical theory.
McLaren was the inaugural recipient of the Paulo Freire Social Justice Award, presented by California's Chapman University in April 2002. His body of work as a curriculum theorist has been analyzed in "Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of Dissent" (2005), edited by Marc Pruyn and Luis M. Huerta-Charles.
McLaren's most recent books include "Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism" (2006), "Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism and Critical Pedagogy" (2006), "Capitalists and Conquerors: Critical Pedagogy Against Empire" (2005), and "Red Seminars: Radical Excursions Into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics and Pedagogy" (2005).
-UCLA-