About Us
Overview
The Pedagogy Lab was launched in 2021 under the leadership of Dr. Caitlin Gunn at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+). We are currently hosted at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Center For Feminist Futures. We share the Center’s commitments to public scholarship; intersectional and transformative research and pedagogy; and imagining (and building) more just and joyous futures.
The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation provides our funding as part of their open education strategy.
Our key initiatives include our annual Pedagogy Fellowship, a thematic conference series, collaborative research projects, and a diverse (and growing) OER library.
We focus on inclusive — anti-racist, queer, anti-ableist, anti-oppressive — pedagogy, promoting the creation and use of open educational resources (OERs) as a means to enhance student learning at all levels and settings, center marginalized perspectives in curricula, and challenge dominant status quos.
Mission & Values
At the Pedagogy Lab:
We believe that education should be accessible, life-affirming, exploratory, and empowering.
We advance liberatory education, which cultivates not only individual liberation, but empathy for others, and a stronger sense of connection and shared responsibility among people.
We locate our intellectual genealogy in the work of marginalized scholars, activists, artists, and thinkers, recognizing their central role in deconstructing and reshaping knowledge.
Our core mission is to employ speculative and experimental approaches to interrogate the status quo in higher education. Subverting expectations and limitations forged by white supremacy and capitalist paradigms is one of the most important charges of this work. Toward this endeavor, we pursue and actualize frameworks of open and accessible pedagogy. We seek to incorporate innovative and technology-centered tools in our work in ways that are liberatory and empowering rather than reproducing extractive logics.
Learning is an act of resistance and joy: our space is not only a hub for intellectual rigor and speculative inquiry, but also a sanctuary for wellness, rest, and pleasure. We hold the radical notion that these elements are not peripheral or contradictory, but are both central to a holistic and revolutionary educational experience.
Liberatory education is a beautiful inevitability that we must continually struggle to achieve across generations. At the forefront of a changing pedagogical landscape, we broaden and push boundaries to create a new shape – one which is fiercely committed to equity, accessibility, and dismantling oppressive systems. We take on projects, research, and collaborations that support that vision.
We are grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for supporting and sustaining our work.