Chapter 6: Navigating Curricular Controversies, Teaching In The Cracks, and Threshold Concepts

At the November 2022 annual meeting of the American Educational Studies Association in Pittsburgh, the Society of Professors of Education hosted its biannual business meeting. During a special session concurrent to the AESA conference, several members of the society’s past and present leadership were invited to speak about their ideas under the umbrella of the topic: creative insubordination. The panel included professors Ming Fang He, Denise Taliaferro Baszile, William Schubert, Paula Groves Price, and Brian Schultz.¹

Drawing from their experiences, the panelists discussed their takes on creative insubordination as it relates to divisive concepts, critical race theory, and current curricular controversies, topics of particular interest to the Society’s membership. Creative insubordination is an approach to navigating classrooms that honors both the content expertise and pedagogical acumen of teachers. It is a form of noncompliance and educators who practice these pedagogies are finding innovative, ingenious, and resourceful ways to do what is right by the students within their classrooms amidst the restrictive, punitive, or absurd rules and regulations made by politicians and, too often, their corporate puppeteers, who have not studied education. By enacting such imaginative pedagogies, these teachers are acting on their convictions and expertise, and in turn, expanding the possibilities for inquiry, agency, and capacity-building.