Learning to Be: Curriculum-Making and Identity-Making Around Gender and Sexuality

• In Event: 81.033 - MTCC Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: 81.033-12 - Queering Educational Practice: Building Capacity for LGBTQ-Affirming Classrooms

Abstract

This inquiry explored the composition of diverse stories to live by, a narrative conception of identity, of four participants with non-dominant expressions of gender and sexuality; more specifically, this inquiry sought to better understand the complexities of the participants’ identity making in the process of curriculum making. Conducted over an 18-month period, the research explored the shaping influences of relationships and contexts in the creation of educative experience for participants. Several learnings emerged from the research; diverse stories to live by around gender and sexuality are: (a) complex, multiple, and diverse; (b) negotiated through social dominant stories; (c) shaped by context; (d) negotiated through relationship; and (e) interwoven/nested with the stories of others with whom they shared life.

Author

• Derek A Hutchinson, The University of Kansas