Critical imaginaries of empathy in teaching and learning about diversity in teacher education

ABSTRACT

‘Difficult’ or potentially discomforting diversity topics and critical, unsettling pedagogies often induce resistances or charges of ‘irrelevance’ in teacher education contexts. In teaching with these topics and pedagogies, there is often a significant emphasis on fostering and utilising the process of empathy in productive ways to change attitudes and reduce social injustices. Drawing on a selection of illustrative accounts from three qualitative studies in schools in Ireland, interwoven with media commentary and some personal catalytic reflections, this paper explores (a) how an emphasis on empathy is not without its limits and restrictive effects in teacher education and (b) the generative possibilities yielded by situating empathy within a queer pedagogy of emotion. This paper’s close attention to and illustration of the limits of empathy within the context of teaching about gender and sexuality diversity opens a new consideration of empathy within a queer pedagogy of emotion and considers the broader potential of this for teaching about diversity in teacher education. Ultimately, this paper advances an argument for a constant watchfulness about how we are responding to diversity dilemmas in teacher education on the premise that such attention can yield new pedagogical imaginaries and possibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian
• gay
• bisexual
• transgender
• queer (LGBTQ)

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the research participants who gave so generously of their time and efforts in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The studies drawn upon in this paper were funded by the Irish Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Aoife Neary

Aoife Neary (BSc, MA, PhD) is Lecturer in Sociology of Education in the School of Education, University of Limerick (UL), Ireland. She held an Irish Research Council (IRC) Government of Ireland Doctoral Scholar award from 2011 until 2014 and has been an IRC New Foundations Awardee in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. She is currently PI on an IRC/Marie Curie co-funded project entitled ‘Researching and Advocating for Quality Education: Achieving Equality for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youth in Schools’. She leads and teaches teacher education modules that explore equality, diversity & inclusion from a sociological perspective.