Check out the video of Wayne Au‘s (University of Washington Bothell) talk on “A Pedagogy of Insurgency in Troubling Times” which he gave as part of the UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy seminar series.
Dr. Au is a former public high school social studies teacher and is now Dean and Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a longtime editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking scholarship about high-stakes testing, neoliberal education policy, teaching for social justice, critical pedagogy, and antiracist education. Author or editor of over 100 publications, his recent co-edited books include Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar- Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality (2022), Rethinking Ethnic Studies (2019) and Teaching for Black Lives (2018). His most recent authored books include the second edition of Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality (2022) and A Marxist Education (2018).
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Teachers are on the frontline of ongoing social, economic, and community health crises. Using the organizing for racial justice done by teachers in Seattle, WA, in this talk Dr. Wayne Au will discuss how teacher actions represent a kind of pedagogy of insurgency that is required when social contradictions reach a particular level. While not all-powerful, it is important to recognize that this kind of pedagogy can have significant local impact as well as offer symbolic inspiration for teacher organizing at the national and international levels.