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An Implicated Praxis

Fri, April 28, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 207 B

Abstract

I examine my praxis as a researcher, K-12 teacher, professional development/curriculum writer, and critical scholar as I work with two documents from a large suburban Midwestern school district. The first is the 2009 Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy, which forbade teachers from discussing or teaching about LGBTQ concepts with students. The second document is the 2012 Consent Decree settlement between the District and US Department of Justice. I discuss how these policies created de facto language policies, the first silencing, and the second affirming LGBTQ students. I trace my history and present with the District and how my context influenced how I wrote and delivered professional development on working with LGBTQ youth. Finally, I show the challenges of working to bring postcolonial change both in academic and practitioner settings.
To examine how language policies are established, I draw on Shohamy (2007), who asserts, “language policies are not stated explicitly but can rather be derived and deduced implicitly” (p. 289). Shohamy further examines how ideologies, mechanisms, and practice all interplay in creating de facto language policies. I examine these factors in how the two documents created two different de facto language policies.
Next, Baxter’s (2003) feminist poststructural discourse analysis is used for its self-reflexivity, deconstructionist approach, and feminist focus. Particularly, the denotative and connotative levels of analysis (Baxter, 2003, p. 76) within the two documents highlight the District’s different and contradictory policies. The District created a de facto language policy in the Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy silencing teachers and students from addressing LGBTQ concerns. Meanwhile, the Consent Decree created a new policy that now affirms LGBTQ students and concerns but not enough time or resources have been devoted to make more meaningful change.
Finally, I explore my implicatedness by drawing on works by Darder (2009), hooks (1994), Minh-Ha (1989), and Villenas (1996), to analyze my insider/outsider role where I feel “I am a walking contradiction with a foot in both worlds—in the dominant privileged institutions and in the marginalized communities” (Villenas, 1996, p. 714). Employing autoethnography, I bridge the three fields of language policy, critical discourse analysis, and postcolonialism to illustrate the difficulty and importance of exploring one’s implicatedness in trying to bring postcolonial change as both an insider and outsider. While the District has made progress, more can be done as it moves beyond its colonial legacy of working with LGBTQ students.

References
Baxter, J. (2003). Positioning gender in discourse: A feminist research methodology.
Darder, A. (2009). Decolonizing the flesh: The body, pedagogy and inequality. In R. S. Coloma (Ed.), Postcolonial challenges in education (217-234). Peter Lang.
Minh-Ha, T. T. (1989). Women, native, other: Writing, postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Shohamy, E. (2007). Language tests as language policy tools. Assessment in Education, 14(1), 117-130.
Villenas, S. (1996). The colonizer/colonized Chicana ethnographer: Identity, marginalization, and co-optation in the field. Harvard Educational Review, 66(4), 711-732.

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