Interrupting, Infiltrating, Investigating: Radical Youth Pedagogy in Education

Frustration can often be stagnating, but it can also encourage action, change, and lead to hope. From the silencing of Indigenous cultures, to the legislation of gendered pedagogy, we are frustrated by educational spaces overshadowed by robotic pedagogy and curriculum that continually fails to recognize the cultures that already exist in those spaces, perhaps most notably, youth culture. The contributions within this volume speak deeply about the radical potentials, challenges, and hopes of a youth-focussed and/or led pedagogy in education. They show possibility, and modest, ethical, and transformative ways of interrupting, infiltrating, and investigating radical youth pedagogy that are not complete but partial, reflective and on-going: we propose radical youth pedagogy as a framework for opening of critical spaces for thinking, doing, being, and performing that can better acknowledge the power and potential in young people, but also practice skills for them to thrive in and beyond education. Radical youth pedagogy means interrupting the silences, exclusions, patterns of dominance and status quo practices of pedagogy, policy, curriculum, and assessment. It means infiltrating with artful and arts-based thinking, writing, production, and practice in ways that connect youth to curriculum, their surroundings, and each other in positive and transformative ways. It also means investigating educator practices, approaches, and even school structures to better support youth in education and throughout their lives. It is our hope that this edited collection may act as a theoretical and practical toolbox for educators wishing to radicalize their educational approaches while disrupting normalized pedagogy and classroom cultures.