‘They don’t really talk about it ‘cos they don’t think it’s right’: heteronormativity and institutional silence in UK primary education

ABSTRACT

Of the increasing number of initiatives setting out to challenge heteronormativity in education, the No Outsiders project has arguably been one of the most influential. Conducted across 15 primary schools in England, No Outsiders sought to disrupt heteronormativity through critical pedagogy, gaining widespread academic and media attention in the process. In spite of its prominence, though, there has been a lack of research exploring the effects of this project on children’s attitudes towards sexuality in school. This paper draws on data from an ethnographic study of two UK primary schools – one that was and one that was not involved in No Outsiders – to explore the ‘effects’ of this critical intervention. The research found that whilst homophobia persisted across both schools, children’s understandings of its acceptability differed markedly according to their involvement in equalities pedagogy, with institutional silence interpreted by many as equivalent to school-sanctioned homophobia. The implications of these findings are significant, revealing proactive sexualities pedagogy as essential to countering the damaging effects of institutional invisibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Heteronormativity
• primary education
• critical pedagogy
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to the children involved in this research, as well as to the anonymous reviewers who provided constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 (repealed in England in 2003) stated that ‘[a] local authority shall not - (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’ (see HMSO 1988).

2 Names of schools and participants are pseudonyms

3 UK national average of EAL (English as an Additional Language) pupils was 20.8% as at January 2017 (Department for Education 2017)

4 UK national average of pupils currently eligible for free school meals was 14% as at January 2017 (Department for Education 2017)

5 Such attitudes parallel discourses around so-called post-feminism (McRobbie 2009), whereby advances in equality are drawn on to legitimise ‘joking’ or ‘ironic’ sexism. These children’s ‘post-homophobic’ attitudes reveal the need for further critical work in schools, which enables a greater understanding of oppressive language and its particular (heterogeneous) effects.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, University of Southampton under Grant ES/J500215/1.

Notes on contributors

Catherine Atkinson

Catherine Atkinson is a Senior Tutor in Education at the University of Manchester, with a background in Women’s Studies, Sociology, and Social Research. Her research is concerned broadly with the workings of heteronormativity in UK education, and both the possibilities and limits of contemporary gender and sexualities ‘equalities’ initiatives. She is also actively engaged in current methodological debates around issues of agency, participation, and power in childhood research.