Justice in Practice: LGBTQ-Supportive Teaching as a Case of Social Justice Teaching Practice

• In Event: Normalizing LGBTQ Across the Curriculum

Abstract

Research on teaching would benefit from conceptualizing social justice teaching as a practice and not as a disposition or set of beliefs. Drawing on theories of social and professional practice to conceptualize the work of social justice teaching as a practice, this paper is a qualitative case study of one practice, anticipating and responding to prejudice, as enacted by twenty-five teachers across fifteen schools, all of whom had reputations for being supportive of lesbian and gay students. Findings illustrate that investigating the practices of social justice oriented teachers can uncover social justice teaching practices and that these practices can be decomposed into component parts that make them learnable by novices.

Author

• Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, University of Washington - Seattle