Moving beyond homonormativity in teacher training: experiences from South Australia

Abstract

As growing numbers of children from lesbian mother families enter the Australian education system, there comes with this an injunction to better include such families. The first step towards such inclusion should be to ensure that teachers are provided with knowledge about lesbian mother families that moves beyond simply refuting stereotypes, and towards acknowledgement of the specific experiences and needs of this family form. However, it is important that educators, when attempting to include lesbian mothers and their children, do not instantiate new norms when attempting to challenge old stereotypes. This paper reports on the development and application of a workshop aimed at providing education students at one South Australian university with a framework for understanding lesbian mother families that is critical of norms in all their forms, including amongst those who research lesbian mother families. It is suggested that the positive findings from the workshop may reflect the utility of challenging both heteronormativity and homonormativity in conjunction with one another so as to present students with a broadly critical approach to sexuality education.

Keywords:

• heteronormativity
• homonormativity
• teacher education
• lesbian mother families
• Australia

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge that this paper was written on the land of the Kaurna people, the First Nations people upon whose land we live and work in Adelaide, South Australia.

Notes

^1. The term ‘model minority’ is extrapolated here from its original use in reference to Asian-American communities. In its original use, it described the high levels of achievement amongst some Asian-American students in comparison to white American students. Critiques of the term (e.g. Li and Wang 2008) emphasise the fact that defining any group as a model minority constructs inclusion in terms of adherence to a liberal norm of success (where there is assumed to be an equal playing field upon which achievement is simply a matter of individual merit). Furthermore, critiques of the term have suggested that the stereotype of the model minority Asian student fails to acknowledge the diverse experiences of all Asian-Americans, and instead instantiates a new norm to which all Asian-Americans must aspire. Applying the concept to lesbian mother families, then, is intended to highlight how the inclusion offered to such families is premised upon the achievement of successful outcomes (as frequently reported in social scientific research), and how this creates new norms that are both stereotyping and exclusionary.