Investigating Policies of Transgender Inclusivity in the Education System in Ontario, Canada

• In Event: 29.072 - Policies and Practices Affirming Transgender and Gender-Creative Students: Cases From Australia, Canada, and the United States

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes
This paper examines the Ontario context of policy formulation and enactment of transgender affirmative education policies. It focuses on a school board which was one of the first in Canada to develop a specific transgender policy for schools. Our purpose is to provide knowledge and insight into the formulation and conception of this policy, with the specific view to understanding how particular discourses of gender inclusivity and transgender accommodation are impacting on understanding the terms of its enactment in schools in this particular district.
2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The perspective and theoretical framework are informed by an engagement with trans scholars such as Airton (2009), Beauchamp & D’Harlingue (2012), Connell (2012), Malatino (2015), Namaste (2000), Serano (2007) and Stryker (2006) who provide epistemological and pedagogical insights into an understanding of trans embodied subjectivities, and who also address fundamental questions related to the impact of cisgenderism on the lives of all individuals. We tease out the implications of these trans-informed perspectives for our engagement with trans policy analysis and enactment in the Ontario education context and in light of our focus on one specific school board policy context.
3. & 4. Methods and data sources
We employ a case study design as informed by Stake (2005) and Patton (2015)Semi-structured interviews with school board members/educators directly involved in the formulation and enactment of the policy at the board level are drawn on as particular data sources. This knowledge is supplemented by data drawn from interviews with transgender scholars and community members with direct knowledge of the school board policy and the broader policy context in Ontario. Our particular analysis of policy is informed by Ball’s (1997) ‘policy sociology’ approach to treating policy as text and policy as discourse, as well as to his later work on policy enactment (Ball et al, 2012).
5. Results
The policy analysis revealed a commitment to transgender accommodation and gender inclusivity. One of the key informants, who was behind the policy formulation, spoke to the battles in getting the policy officially instituted. These battles were not so much identified as emanating from within the board itself but from resistant parents who were vehemently opposed to the introduction of such a policy. Ultimately, it was a human rights case launched against the board by parents of a transgender student in one of its schools that paved the way for the official formulation of the board’s policy in its current form. The policy has undergone recent revision and indicates a shift in moving beyond a focus on transgender accommodation to more of an emphasis of curricular and pedagogical intervention and professional development for teachers
6. Scholarly significance of the study
The case study provides vital policy and pedagogical insights into trans infused initiatives in the Ontario education system, which have implications more broadly for thinking through practice beyond a focus on accommodation and the need for empirical documentation of such policy enactment.

Authors

• Wayne J. Martino, The University of Western Ontario

• Lee Airton, Queen's University

• Wendy Marie Cumming-Potvin, Murdoch University