Advancing a critical trans framework for education

Abstract

This article introduces a new theoretical framework comprised of three principles for teaching, learning, and researching gender in a way that celebrates gender diversity and centers transgender experiences and knowledge. The first principle describes how gender operates on multiple levels including individual, institutional, and socio-cultural. The second principle explores genderism as a system of oppression and delineates some of the ways genderism operates concurrently with all other systems of oppression, with racism and ableism provided as examples. The third principle asserts that transgender people’s lived experiences, experiential trans knowledge, and counter-narratives must be at the center of transformative efforts in educational spaces. Based on these principles, the article offers suggestions for how people in various educational roles in K-12 and post-secondary education could implement this framework to create educational spaces that affirm and support people of all genders.

Keywords:

• Transgender oppression
• teacher education
• social justice
• epistemology

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to Devon L. White; thank you for supporting all of my dreams, including the decade-long development of this framework. I am so grateful to friends, colleagues, and mentors that provided invaluable feedback on previous iterations of this paper, including: Terry Flennaugh, Django Paris, Lynn Fendler, Elizabeth J. Meyer, Alyssa Hadley Dunn, Adam Schmitt, Saili Kulkarni, Patrick Skrivan, and Melina Constantine Miseo. To the anonymous peer reviewers and editorial staff of Curriculum Inquiry, particularly Lance McCready, Lucy El-Sherif, and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, thank you for pushing me to make this piece better and better with each revision. And finally, to all my trans siblings, and my queer kin: without your brilliance, rage, strength, and voice, this scholarship would not exist. Because of you, I am.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Throughout this paper, I use “trans and non-binary” whenever possible in order to highlight the experiences and identities of non-binary people, which can sometimes be invisibilized when trans is used as an umbrella term. Some non-binary people also consider themselves to be trans, while others do not. Broadly speaking, in areas where “trans” is used alone, it should be implied that non-binary experiences are also acknowledged and represented.

2 For a more extensive statement of positionality from the author, see Kean, 2020.

3 Gender identity can be described as “each person’s deeply felt internal experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means)” (International Panel, 2016, p. 1). Jourian (2015) offers a compelling model for understanding individual gender and sexuality, where the aspects of individual gender are arranged as dynamic planes rather than a traditional linear model or even the more recent iterations of gender as a spectrum, such as the Gender Unicorn (Pan & Moore, 2019).

4 For more information on the struggle to be seen as “trans enough,” see Catalano (2015b); Galupo et al. (2014); Garrison (2018); Jourian et al. (2015); Matsuno and Budge (2017); Stewart (2017); and Vega et al. (2019).

5 There are many iterations of the acronym used to represent the broad community of folks marginalized by sexuality and/or gender identity; among them, LGBTQ is one of the most widely used in educational scholarship. Due to the frequent erasure of trans identity in situations where “LGBTQ” is invoked, I prefer to use LGBQPA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, asexual) to broadly represent non-heterosexual identities and TGQNB (Trans, genderqueer, non-binary), or “trans and non-binary,” when generally discussing non-cisgender identities. However, when referring to existing scholarship, I use LGBTQ to reflect its common usage in educational spaces.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eli Kean

Eli Kean, Ph.D., is affiliate faculty in Women's and Gender Studies and Coordinator of the LGBTQ Resource Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Eli earned their Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from Michigan State University.