Learning through practice: Conceptualizing the demands of queer-inclusive teaching

Abstract

The scholarly conversation on preparing teachers to organize safer, more humanizing learning environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) youth generally does not intersect with conversations unfolding in the broader teacher education literature, specifically around what practice means in learning to teach. In this article, I bridge that divide by reporting on a case study designed to investigate how one kindergarten teacher enacted queer-inclusive practice. By queer-inclusive practice, I mean to capture two pedagogical goals: (1) including LGBTQ + topics in curricula and (2) moving beyond inclusion by disrupting normativity. Grounded in the assumption that teaching is uncertain and complex work, I draw on queer and anti-oppressive theories to conceptualize demands as a generative lens for investigating what teachers negotiate during enactments of queer-inclusive practice. Bringing that lens to bear in this study animated the unpredictability of what pedagogical efforts to disrupt commonsense will do to learners and learners’ desires to learn in ways that repeat what they already know. I conclude that the lens of demands frames pedagogical challenges that arise when teachers enact disruptive, justice-oriented practices as a productive problem space for teachers and teacher educators to navigate.

Keywords:

• Teacher education
• teacher development
• queer theory
• equity and inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Staley

Sara Staley is an assistant professor of Teacher Learning, Research, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies how educators learn and enact queer-inclusive and antioppressive practices. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Teacher Education, and Research in the Teaching of English. She co-directs A Queer Endeavor (https://www.colorado.edu/center/a-queer-endeavor/), a nationally recognized center for gender and sexual diversity in education that works in partnership with districts and school communities to design learning environments in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) youth can thrive.