Research & Ideas
The thinking behind the work.
Wonder’s ideas are grounded in rigorous research and lived practice. Here are publications, keynote work, and the thinking that drives every program — written for educators, institutions, and anyone who believes a better world starts with better questions.
Scholarly Work
Publications
Wonder’s scholarship is grounded in the work of Weber, Gramsci, Freire, Polanyi, hooks, Andreotti, Raworth, Giroux, Nussbaum, and Pashby.
01
Doctoral Dissertation · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, May 2025
Recovering Epistemic Sight in a Neoliberalized World: Critical Economic Literacy for the Promotion of Critical Global Citizenship Education
This dissertation investigates how neoliberal economic ideology has shaped the pedagogical assumptions of five secondary teachers at one of China’s most elite international schools — and demonstrates that Critical Economic Literacy (CEL), operationalised through the DISRUPT thinking routine, enables epistemic recovery and a renewed commitment to Critical Global Citizenship Education. Using intentionalist orientational qualitative inquiry, data were collected across nine months through surveys, reflective journals, revised unit plans, semi-structured interviews, and Most Significant Change narratives.
Methodology
Intentionalist orientational qualitative inquiry · Thematic analysis
Findings
951 coded segments · 111 codes · 6 thematic findings across 3 research questions
02
Forthcoming Journal Article · Theory & Research in Social Education
Teaching What They Cannot See: Critical Economic Literacy, Epistemic Blindness, and the Possibility of Critical Global Citizenship Education
A practitioner-research article tracing how Critical Economic Literacy addresses the epistemic blindness that prevents educators from teaching Critical GCE — and how the DISRUPT thinking routine operationalises this in classroom practice.
Journal
Theory & Research in Social Education
Status
Forthcoming
03
Forthcoming Book Chapter · Bloomsbury
Recovering Epistemic Sight: Critical Economic Literacy for Teachers in the Promotion of Critical Global Citizenship Education
A book chapter contributing to the international conversation on global social justice education — examining how CEL enables teachers to see, question, and move beyond the neoliberal assumptions shaping their practice.
In
Research in Global Social Justice Education: Democracy, Decoloniality, Global Citizenship and Sustainability
Publisher
Bloomsbury
Status
Forthcoming
Keynote · March 2026
Who Told You That Story?
Festival of Hope, Keystone Academy — 2026
The IB Festival of Hope is a global youth initiative by the International Baccalaureate — creating spaces for students, educators, and thinkers to turn complex challenges into positivity and hope. The Beijing edition at Keystone Academy convened students from public schools across Beijing, international schools across China, and a delegation from Cambodia.
Wonder was invited to deliver the keynote — an invitation to educators and school leaders to surface the economic narratives embedded in their curricula, and to ask: who benefits from the stories we treat as common sense?
Video & Media
Watch & Listen
Why the SDGS will fail and what we must do about it
Dr. Jane Goodall asked, “As the most intelligent species on this planet, we are also the only species destroying our only home. How come?” The SDGs risk failing because they mostly address symptoms without confronting the deeper epistemic blindness embedded in the economic narratives we take for granted. In response to Dr. Goodall, the problem is certainly not about intelligence, but rather our inability to see and question the assumptions that shape how we understand and live in our world.
Why We Need Critical Economic Literacy
An introduction to Critical Economic Literacy — why it matters, what it makes possible, and how it changes what educators can see and do in their classrooms.
In Conversation: Critical Economic Literacy, Economics of Hope, and the Stories We Inherit
A 36-minute conversation with Dr. Emiliano Bosio — editor of Ethical Global Citizenship Education (Cambridge University Press) — exploring what Critical Economic Literacy is, why GDP myths matter for educators, how neoliberalism operates as invisible water in schools, and what an economics of hope might look like.
Newsletter · Essays · Notes
Essays
- Reflection
After the keynote in Beijing, a student asked me: ‘If we can see the stories now — does that make us responsible for changing them?’ This is a note on...
- Newsletter
Most economics education teaches students the rules of a game without asking who wrote the rules, who benefits from them, or whether we might want to play something else entirely....
- Essay
We’ve built schools that feel caring and look beautiful while quietly reproducing the very inequalities they claim to disrupt. A long read on what it means to educate inside a...
Conversations
Podcasts, interviews & panel discussions
Wonder’s ideas resonate and are growing in reach. Podcast appearances, interview recordings, and panel discussions will be collected here as they happen. If you host a show, run a reading series, or organize a panel on education, economic justice, or critical thinking — we’d love to hear from you.
Let's Build Something
Education for a regenerative world doesn't build itself.
If this thinking resonates — bring it into your school, your institution, your community. Wonder works with people who are ready to collaborate across the old boundaries, to question the stories running our schools, and to build something genuinely different.