Institutional Barriers, Regulatory Practices, and the Positionality of Educators Working With Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Youth

• In Event: 66.059 - Oppression or Liberation? Realities and Possibilities of Institutional Action for Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Students

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on 57 in-depth interviews of school staff to examine how these educators understand their role within the school system (particularly as institutional actors) when they work with trans or gender-nonconforming students. How does one support these students effectively in an institutional context (school) that is profoundly shaped by systems of power that legitimize and enforce gender conformity? What narratives are (un)available for educators to make sense of their experience, and what impact may this have on our understanding of how to best foster the acceptance and celebration of gender diversity in our schools?
All interviews were conducted in 2013 in four different school districts in one Canadian province. I primarily spoke with administrators, counsellors, and classroom teachers although other school staff (such as support workers or librarians) were interviewed when relevant. I attempted to interview as many staff as possible at each school in order to reach a more complex understanding of how specific institutional sites respond to ‘gender events’ (moments when common gendered scripts are made visible through violations) and the visible presence of trans and gender-nonconforming students.
I analyze interview data using the tools of discourse analysis, particularly critical discourse analysis and discursive psychology, in order to highlight the discursive mechanisms employed by educators to discuss their experiences and explore how educators talk in a way that illuminates how they negotiate their position as individual agents of change working within complicated, often oppressive structures that tend to enforce gender conformity. In doing so, my goal is not simply to discuss what strategies educators use to understand their role in supporting trans and gender-nonconforming students; it is also to understand what the use of particular discursive mechanisms accomplishes. In other words, I am interested in how discourses open up specific educational possibilities but also close down particular understandings and opportunities, and in the social consequences of this process.
Specifically, I argue that while educators occasionally recognize their own regulatory practices and their (often involuntary) complicity in mechanisms that enforce gender conformity, often the various discursive mechanisms through which educators recount their experiences work to distance them from the institutional systems of power in which they are necessarily implicated. These mechanisms are: (1) relying on bullying discourses; (2) framing themselves as open-minded individuals; (3) emphasizing the inflexibility of the systems they work in; (4) acknowledging one’s complicity in systems of power. The consequences of educators using these discursive mechanisms is that regulatory regimes of heteronormativity and gender conformity tend to be solidified rather than challenged, and the key role that educators play in determining the field of legibility in schools (as well as their agency) is downplayed. This has important implications for the work of creating welcoming schools for students of all genders and gender expressions; the discursive work of educators has very real consequences in shaping what actions and strategies of support are seen as imaginable and appropriate or, conversely, inconceivable, which may make it more difficult for educational spaces to truly change.

Author

• Hélène Frohard-Dourlent, The University of British Columbia