Learning from preservice teachers’ responses to trans-themed young adult literature: improving personal practice in teacher education

ABSTRACT

Tensions and contradictions in my personal practice and in the extant research prompted this study of preservice teachers’ responses to trans-themed young adult literature. I adopted a self-study methodology to identify and address the shortcomings in my practice of including trans-themed literature in a Literature for Adolescents course. Through inductive analysis, I discovered that my students made statements related to literary, sociocultural, and personal themes. Next, I considered the data within and across themes to reflect on my personal practice. The students’ responses suggest that I could improve my teaching practice by (1) guiding them to employ specific critical theories and analysis and (2) including multiple texts about the transgender experience. I propose and trouble these practices and consider the ways they confirm or contradict others’ research regarding good teaching practices.

KEYWORDS:

• preservice teachers
• self-study
• teaching pedagogy
• trans-themed literature
• young adult literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I respectfully use the term ‘transgender’ throughout this article because it is the descriptor most frequently used in trans-themed young adult novels and in analyses of these novels. I realize that individuals with multiple, nonbinary identities may prefer terms such as, but not limited to, trans*, transqueer, transsexual, genderqueer, or gender fluid.

2. StoryCorps is an oral history initiative that records, collects, and preserves the stories of people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Story Corp conversations are broadcast on National Public Radio, and more than 50,000 stories are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

3. In this discussion, I do not repeat the author copyright information for Almost perfect (Katcher, 2009), Luna (Peters, 2004), and Parrotfish (Wittlinger, 2007) to minimize redundancy and to maintain focus on students’ written voices.