Casey Philip Wong

B.A. in Rhetoric, University of California Berkeley, 2009
M.A. in Sociology of Education, New York University, 2012
M.A. in Linguistics, Stanford University, 2019,
Ph.D. in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education, 2019

Justice in educational theory, policy, and practice
Pedagogies of love and love-politics
Hip Hop pedagogies
Culturally sustaining and strength-based pedagogies
Martial arts pedagogies
Black Feminism and critical feminisms
Racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition
Abolition and decolonization
Co-conspiracy and solidarity
Language and racialization (raciolinguistics)

Casey Philip Wong is an assistant professor of Social Foundations of Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Wong’s interdisciplinary research examines justice in educational theory, policy and practice. This involves critically questioning how compulsory state-sanctioned schooling has continued to be constructed as the “great equalizer,” and accordingly, education research as a benevolent contributor to this material and ideological project of education. He elucidates this perspective in an article he published in 2021 in the Review of Research in Education, “The Wretched of the Research: Disenchanting Man2-as-Educational Researcher and Entering the 36th Chamber of Education Research.” Consequently, Dr. Wong aims to advance justice by interrogating systems of coloniality, carcerality and oppression in education through critical feminist, anti-colonial and abolitionist frameworks and by investigating and developing culturally sustaining and strength-based pedagogies to teach and learn otherwise. He researches and collaborates with communities to affirm, foster, sustain and revitalize educational institutions and relations that critically center on overlapping and interconnected African/Black, Indigenous, Latinx/a/o, Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

This educational work has crucially involved partnering and working directly with county offices of education (e.g., Los Angeles County Office of Education), school districts (e.g., Center Unified School District), teacher preparation programs (e.g., Alder Graduate School of Education), schools (e.g., Oak Hill Elementary School), and educational institutions within the U.S. and internationally (e.g., Heal the Hood Project in Cape Town, South Africa), to develop curriculum and instruction that address systemic injustices. As a crucial part of this work, Wong has been proudly learning, teaching, practicing and researching restorative and transformative justice with the youth organizers of Youth United for Community Action. His work with Youth United for Community Action is in part funded by a Lyle Spencer Foundation grant with H. Samy Alim and Django Paris, and also includes collaborations and meetings with selected educational institutions engaging in culturally sustaining pedagogical work within Seattle (U.S.), Barcelona (Spain) and Cape Town (South Africa). His multi-regional and multi-national empirical investigations strive to solve the most intractable educational problems, and to prepare the next generation of school leaders, teachers and educators to achieve educational justice through policy and practice guided by state-of-the-art theory, evidence and careful analysis.

He is developing these perspectives in his book manuscript, currently being adapted from his dissertation, Pray You Catch Me: A Critical Feminist and Ethnographic Study of Love as Pedagogy and Politics for Social Justice (Finalist for the 2019 National Women’s Studies Association and University of Illinois Press First Book Prize, currently in-preparation for Teachers College Press). In addition to his own book manuscript, he is co-editing a volume entitled, Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures (in-press with the University of California Press for release in January 2023). Including contributions by teachers, community-based educators, activists, and Hip Hop artists from across the U.S., Spain, Syria, Palestine and South Africa, the volume examines how Hip Hop pedagogies can develop critical consciousness and advance justice for youth when presented as culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum and instruction. Alongside his colleagues and co-conspirators in the Abolition and Education Collective, he is in the process of co-editing a volume on abolitionist education research. His newest publication in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology examines the racialization of Polynesian youth through policing, gentrification and an ideology of oppressionlessness within the California Bay Area.

In addition to his research, teaching and mentoring, he was recently an invited panelist for a Presidential Session at the American Educational Research Association on centering cultural and artistic practice in scientific design (San Diego), an invited presenter for a Presidential Session on Hip Hop Pedagogies at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (Chicago), an invited presenter on an Executive Session Roundtable at the American Anthropological Association that focused on abolitionist anthropology (Baltimore), and a speaker at the International James Baldwin Conference (Paris). Building upon his artistry as a Bboy and beatmaker, Wong worked with activists in Hip Hop Education to organize four Think Tank gatherings. He also organized two culturally sustaining pedagogy conferences that brought together leaders working for educational justice from across the world. Wong has been working inside and outside of schools to heal, cultivate critical thinking, and educate for collective freedom with K-12 youth, undergraduate and graduate students, from Oakland to NYC, for over 15 years.