Learning Through Practice: How Teachers Engage Students in Gender and Sexual Diversity–Focused Instruction

• In Event: Pedagogy and Curriculum for Developing Critical, Racial, and Gender Literacies

Abstract

While education researchers widely recommend that teachers take proactive approaches by explicitly addressing gender and sexual diversity through the curriculum, less is known about what happens when teachers engage in that complex work. Our study, therefore, leveraged an opportunity-rich research context in order to deepen the knowledge base concerning teachers’ implementation of education that affirms gender and sexual diversity. Based on analysis of video recordings of five K-12 teachers’ enactments of gender and sexual diversity-focused lessons, this research highlights portraits of what enactment of inclusive, affirming practice looks like. We attend to moves that teachers made moment to moment in the classroom and to ordinary teaching demands that arose along the way.

Authors

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Sara Staley, University of Colorado - Boulder