LGBTQ+/Ethnic Studies and the Embrace of Complexity: Infusing Curriculum With Gender Equity, Educational Justice

• In Event: Reading Gender and Sexuality in K–12 Classrooms, U.S. and Saudi Arabian Contexts

Abstract

Increasingly, schools recognize the complexity of gender identity. Justice-oriented educators, in a push to become more aware and accepting of issues concerning gender and equity, are looking for ways to embrace all students and to teach more respectfully. This study considers one LGBTQ+/Ethnic Studies high school course — likely the first in the US — and its aim to give voice to marginalized people by exploring the American experience through perspectives not typically discussed in US classrooms. Through interviews and exercises in historical thinking, we present the impact of their understanding gender and sexuality. We identify curriculum and instruction from the course that can be infused into traditional K-12 social studies courses to promote gender equity and educational justice.

Authors

• Laura Moorhead, San Francisco State University

• Jeremy D. Jimenez, SUNY - College at Cortland