"I Wasn't Even Sure What the Letters Meant": Increasing Undergraduate Teacher Candidates' LGBTQIA+ Allyship Through Interdisciplinary Writing

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Learning About and Planning for Equity and Justice Across the Teacher Continuum

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to answer a university wide call to improve undergraduate interdisciplinary writing, while at the same time addressing what we saw as the disparity of LGBTQIA+ materials for elementary classrooms. We asked students in four different courses across two semesters to create multimodal texts for other new teachers, community members and children and adolescents through a forthcoming digital repository of the resulting materials. Results indicate that while teacher candidates were at first hesitant to address LQBTQIA+ issues in the K-6 setting, their attitudes, knowledge, and ability to create meaningful literature for children and adolescents increased, as did their proficiency in research and interdisciplinary writing.

Authors

• Judith M Dunkerly-Bean, Old Dominion University

• Helen Crompton, Old Dominion University

• Valerie Taylor, Old Dominion University

• Julia Morris, Old Dominion University