Peter McLaren

Professor Peter McLaren, B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed., Ph.D., F.R.S.A., Ed.D. (honoris causa), Dip Tchg

Peter McLaren is Professor Emeritus at the School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, in 1984. He worked as an elementary teacher in the northwest end of Toronto in the 1970s and published a diary of his teaching experiences that became a Canadian bestseller. He taught in teacher education for a year in his native Canada at Brock University. He went on to teach for eight years at Miami University of Ohio, 20 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, and 10 years as Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, The Donna Ford Attallah College of Education Studies, Chapman University, where he also served as Co-Director and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice, for the Paulo Freire Democratic Project. He served as Chair Professor, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China (2015-20). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce and a Fellow of the American Education Research Association, his writings have won numerous awards and have been translated into 25 languages. He is the recipient of four honorary doctorates from Argentina, Chile and Finland and four Lifetime Achievement Awards. He is the 2023 recipient of the Paulo Freire Legacy Award from the American Educational Research Association. Professor McLaren is the Co-Founder of Instituto McLaren de Pedagogía Crítica, Ensenada, Mexico. He has also received numerous awards throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2023 he was recognized as an International Thought Leader by Research Outreach and his book, Pedagogy of Insurrection, was named a Peter Lang Publications Classic. In 2023 Professor McLaren was ranked among the top 2% of influential scientists in the world, according to the worldwide database compiled by Stanford University. He is the author and editor of over 40 books and hundreds of research publications. His work has been endorsed by Paulo Freire, Slavoj Zizek, Paula Allman, Daniel Ellsberg, Henry Giroux, Carl Boggs and other notable scholars. Professor McLaren is a member of the Knights of the Immaculata, and its outreach, the Knights at the Foot of the Cross, devoted to the Virgin Mary and inspired by St. Maximilian Kolbe, who volunteered to be executed in the place of another prisoner while in captivity in Auschwitz concentration camp.