Quiet Girls and Active Boys: Heteronormative Gender Roles in Teacher Allies' Classrooms

• In Event: 63.075 - Policing and Performing Gender Binaries: Teachers and Students Negotiating Heteronormative "Bullying" Discourses in U.S., U.K., and Australian Secondary Schools

Abstract

Schools’ investment in heterosexual identity—in envisioning successful student development in terms of binary gender and future heterosexual family life—is a contextual element that has been conspicuously under-examined in research on teacher support for LGBTQ students. The presence of gender stereotyping and gender-based assumptions about student identities and behavior in teachers’ pedagogy is crucial to questions about inclusive schools for LGBTQ youth. Rigid gender norms are cultural foundations of gender-based and sexual harassment that LGBTQ students experience in schools (Pascoe, 2013; Ringrose & Renold, 2010) and “many bullying behaviors are rooted in reinforcing the ‘rules’ for ‘appropriate’ gender behavior” (Payne & Smith, 2013, p. 21). Students learn these gender rules throughout their schooling experiences, and they measure themselves and one another against idealized constructs of masculinity and femininity (Payne & Smith, 2013). LGBTQ students are at particular risk for being targeted and vilified for their gender “failures” and, therefore, stand to benefit from school environments where these rigid gender rules are called into question.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how traditional binary gender categories shape classroom interactions between teachers who have identified themselves as Allies for LGBTQ students and their students. This paper was derived from a larger qualitative study exploring the professional experiences of Ally educators in U.S. public secondary schools. Nine teachers representing five secondary schools each participated in 2-3 semi-structured interviews and approximately 15 hours of classroom observation. Questions driving this research focused on (1) how teacher allies make meaning of LGBTQ students’ needs and their roles in addressing those needs; (2) how participants integrate “ally” work into the larger context of their professional practice; and (3) participants’ management of stigma or resistance around their “ally” work. Data analysis has utilized an emergent coding process reflective of Carspecken’s (1996) critical qualitative method.

Findings indicate that teachers’ interpretations of who their students are or how they should effectively teach were often reliant on assumptions about boys’ and girls’ different learning needs. These gendered differences were presented as common sense, and they reproduced stereotypical ideas about girls being more emotionally vulnerable and boys being physically active and unfocused. Additionally, reliance on taken-for-granted gender differences allowed boys’ performances of male privilege to dominate the social interactions in many classrooms. Whether teachers acknowledged the presence of a “boy problem,” ignored it, or were oblivious, classroom disruptions caused by boys’ volume and physical movement were present in the majority of classroom observations. It will be argued that the reproduction of strict gender roles in teacher allies’ classrooms limited the possibilities for non-normative gender and sexual identities to be present and visible in classrooms that, according to participants, were safe and comfortable for LGBTQ youth.

Author

• Melissa J. Smith, University of Central Arkansas