• Ph.D., Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin
• M.I.T., Social Studies, Economics, and Language Arts, Evergreen State College
• B.A., Liberal Studies, Evergreen State College

Dr. Au’s academic interests broadly encompass critical education theory and teaching for social justice.

Dr. Au’s research focuses on educational equity, high-stakes testing, curriculum theory, educational policy studies and social studies education.

Martial Arts, Old School Hip Hop, Yoga, Fly Fishing

Professional Affiliations

• Editorial Board Member – Rethinking Schools
• National Council for the Social Studies
• Washington State Council for the Social Studies
• American Educational Research Association
• American Educational Studies Association
• National Association of Multicultural Education

Professional Background

• Visiting Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Human Development Education, University of Hong Kong
• Assistant Professor, Curriculum Studies, Educational Research, Multicultural Education, Department of Secondary Education, California State University, Fullerton
• Student Teacher Clinical Supervisor, Secondary Social Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Social Studies and Language Arts Teacher, Berkeley High School, Berkeley Unified Schools, Berkeley, CA
• Social Studies and Language Arts Teacher, Garfield High School, Seattle Public Schools, Seattle, WA
• Social Studies and Language Arts Teacher, and Head Teacher, Middle College High School – South Seattle Community College, Seattle Public Schools, Seattle, WA
• Practitioner in Residence, Women’s Center for Intercultural Studies, St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN
• History Teacher, Upward Bound, South Seattle Community College, Seattle, WA
• Tutor/Counselor, Residence Manager, Dorm Director, Teacher, Upward Bound, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA

Selected Honors & Awards

• 2023 Outstanding Book Award, Society of Professors of Education, Insurgent Society Studies. (Merchant, N., Shear, S. & Au, W. eds.).
• 2023 Weissberg Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice, Beloit College. Beloit, WI. March 27-31, 2023
• 2019 Distinguished K-12 Educational Leader Award, The Evergreen State College Master in Teaching Program. Olympia, WA.
• 2019 INDIES book of the Year Awards Winner – Foreword INDIES Gold Winner, Rethinking Ethnic Studies (Cuauhtin, T., Zavala, M., Sleeter, C., & Au, W., eds.)
• 2019 Skipping Stones Honors Award, Teaching for Black Lives (Watson, D., Hagopian, J., & Au, W. eds.)
• 2017 Critics’ Choice Award, American Educational Studies Association, Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of U.S. Curriculum (co authored with A. Brown & D. Calderon). Awarded November 4, 2017, Pittsburgh.
• 2017 William H. Watkins Award for Scholar Activism, Society of Professors of Education. Awarded April 29, 2017, San Antonio.
• 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award, UW Bothell, University of Washington system-wide award for excellence in Teaching.

Selected Publications

• Au, W. (2025) Race, curriculum, and the politics of educational justice. Teachers College Press.
• Au, W. (2025). Asian American Racialization and the Politics of U.S. Education. Routledge.
• Au, W. (2024). “How does it feel to be a solution?”: Asian American racialization and the politics of U.S. Multicultural Education Review, 1-16.
• Au, W. (Ed.) (2024). Rethinking multicultural education: Teaching for racial and cultural justice (3rd Edition). Rethinking Schools, Ltd.
• Au, W. (2023). Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality (2nd revised edition). Routledge.
• Au, W. (2023). Curriculum standpoint for social justice: Understanding the politics of school knowledge. Revista Internacional de Educaticion para la Justicia Social, 12(2), 11-24.
• Merchant, N., Shear, S., & Au, W. (Eds.) (2022). Insurgent social studies: Scholar-educators disrupting erasure and marginality. Myers Education Press.
• Au, W. (2022) Asian American racialization, racial capitalism, and the threat of the model minority. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
• Au, W. (2021). A pedagogy of insurgency: Teaching and organizing for radical racial justice in our schools. Educational Studies, 57(2), 1-15.
• Au, W. & Hagopian J. (2021). Bomb threats and Black Lives Matter at school: Teaching and organizing against white supremacy in K-12 education. In, R. Verma & M. Apple (Eds.), Disrupting hate in education: Teacher activists, democracy, and global pedagogies of interruption (pp. 76-92). Routledge: New York.
• Au, W. (2021) Testing for whiteness: How high-stakes, standardized tests promote racism, undercut diversity, and undermine multicultural education. In, H. P. Baptiste & J. H. Writer (Eds.), Evolution of Multicultural Education: 21^st Century (pp. 99-113). Taylor Francis: New York.
• Au, W. (2020). California vetoed ethnic studies requirements for public high school students, but the movement grows. The Conversation. November 25, 2020 (re-published across over 2 dozen news outlets).
• Au, W. (2020, October 27). High-stakes testing, standardization, and inequality in the united states. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press.
• Au, W. & Hagopian, J. (2020). How one elementary school sparked a movement to make Black students’ live matter. In, D. Jones & J. Hagopian (Eds.), Black lives matter at school: An uprising for educational justice (pp. 33-38). Haymarket Books: Chicago.
• Au, W. (2020). High-stakes testing: A tool for white supremacy for 100 years. In E. Mayorga, U. Aggarwal, & B. Picower (Eds.), What’s race got to do with it?: How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality (Revised 2^nd edition, pp. 13-36). Peter Lang: New York.
• Hodge, E., Childs, J., & Au, W. (Eds.) (2020). Researching 21st Century Education Policy Through Social Network Analysis. Special issue of the Education policy analysis archives.
• Hodge, E., Childs, J., & Au, W. (2020). Power, brokers, and agendas: New directions for the use of social network analysis in education policy. Education policy analysis archives.
• Au, W. (2019). Racial justice is not a choice: White supremacy, high-stakes testing, and the punishment of Black and Brown children. Rethinking Schools, 33(4).
• Zavala, M., Cuahatin, T., Sleeter, C., & Au, W. (Eds.) (2019). Rethinking Ethnic Studies. Rethinking Schools: Milwaukee, WI.
• Hagopian, J., Watson, D., & Au, W. (Eds.) (2018). Teaching for Black lives. Rethinking Schools: Milwaukee, WI.
• Au, W. (2018) A Marxist education: Learning to change the world. Haymarket Books.
• Au, W. (2018). The socialist case against the SAT. Jacobin. April, 14, 2018.
• Au, W. (2017). Neoliberalism and teacher education: The contradiction and the dilemma. Teacher Education and Practice, 30(2), 283-286.
• Au, W. (2017). The dialectical materialism of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. Reflexão e Ação, 25(2).
• Au, W. (2017). When multicultural education is not enough. Multicultural Perspectives, 19(3), 147-150.
• Au, W., Brown, A., & Calderon, D. (2016). Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of U.S. Curriculum: Communities of Color and Official Knowledge in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Au, W. (2016). Techies, the Tea Party, and Race to the Top: The rise of the new upper middle class and tensions in the rightist politics of federal education reform. The Educational Forum, 80(1), 208-224.
• Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, standardized testing as a racial project of neoliberal multiculturalism. Education Policy, 30(1), 39-62.

Selected Keynotes and Named Lectures

• Au, W. (2024). “How does it feel to be a solution?” Asian American racialization and the politics of U.S. education. Korean Association for Multicultural Education. Seoul, Korea. May 30, 2024.
• Au, W. (2024). Teaching for social justice in troubling times. Planning for diversity: Bridging perspectives in education. Center for Educational Research & Department of Social Studies Education, College of Education, Seoul National University. May 5, 2024.
• Au, W. (2024). Asian American identity and the politics of race in education. Martin Morgensen Education Lecture. University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. May 2, 2024.
• Au, W. (2024). Asian American racialization and the politics of U.S. education. Racial Justice Equity Talk Series. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul. May 1, 2024.
• Au, W. (2023). Am I a model minority? Thinking through the politics of Asian American education. UnboundEd Standards Institute. Washington, D.C. July 20, 2023.
• Au, W. (2021). Critical research and social justice: Biography, epistemology, and activism. Seminario Internacional Doctorado en Educacion. Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile (virtual). August 30 & 31, & September 2 & 3, 2021.
• Au, W. (2021). Assessment and social justice: Looking ahead. 3rd Symposium on Assessment and Social Justice (session II). Assessment Study Group, Faculty of Philosophy & Humanities, University of Chile (virtual). August 27, 2021.

Selected Scholarly Interviews and Public Scholarship

• Au, W. (2025). “Superachievers” vs. “super predators”: How the racist love of the model minority is weaponized against Black and Asian American students. Rethinking Schools.
• Au, W. (2024). New tests, same old problems: How high-stakes standardized tests have always reproduced inequity. Horizontes, 42(1).
• Au, W. (2024). Curriculum, social movements and the dialectics of cultural hegemony (interviewed by F. Z. Narita). Cadernos CIMEAC, 14(1).
• Au, W., & Uysal, H. (2024). Of high-stakes standardized testing and educational inequities for English Learners: In dialogue with Wayne Au. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
• Au, W. (2023). How I got censored by a Southern California school district. Rethinking Schools.
• Au, W. (2023). Isn’t that what the case is about, the discrimination against Asian Americans?: Conservatives use racial wedge to attack affirmative action. Rethinking Schools, 38(1). 14-19.
• Au, W. (2022). Wayne Au – beyond neoliberal multiculturalism: Social justice education in a post-Trump America. Collective Intellectualities podcast. March 23, 2022.
• Hauk, W., Miller, L., & Au, W. (2022). Is the pandemic over? We asked an economist, an education expert and a public health scholar their views. The Conversation. September 11, 2022. (Republished in over 22 venues including CNN & Salon, with over 55k reads)
• Au, W. (2021). The futility of standardized testing in a crazy pandemic year. The Washington Post. March 16, 2021.
• Au, W. (2020). California vetoed ethnic studies requirements for public high school students, but the movement grows. The Conversation. November 25, 2020. (Republished across over 2 dozen news outlets).

Selected Media Interviews

• “Wayne Au to Lead Diversity Initiatives,” University of Washington Bothell.
• “Wayne Au Book Influencing Educators on Race,” University of Washington Bothell.
• Featured in Evergreen Magazine “Teaching to Change the World”
• Eve Ewing interviewed by Wayne Au
• Au, W. (2019). Learning to change the world: Interview with Wayne Au (French). Les Cahiers de Pedagogies Radicales (1). September 2019.
• Au, W. (2018) Interview for Loud and Clear: Education for Liberation. July 23, 2018.