Cultivating a Queer Mind-Set: How One Elementary School Teacher Is "Rattling Common Sense"

• In Event: Connections and Relationships Shaping and Redefining Queerness in Education

Abstract

A significant body of research on gender and sexual diversity in education has called on teachers to “move beyond inclusion” of LGBTQ+ voices in curriculum by queering their practice and “disrupting cis-heteronormativity.” However, in our research, we have found that disrupting cis-heteronormativity is “demanding” work for teachers to engage. That is, the pedagogical goal of disrupting normativity is quite complex and involves teachers’ moves to “rattl[e] the common sense” (Kumashiro, 2015) of their students. In this case study, we focus on patterned moves that Laura, a first-grade teacher, made to disrupt cis-heteronormativity by supporting her students to cultivate what we call a “queer mindset”—a way of thinking, feeling, doing, that “rattles” her students’ common sense.

Authors

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Sara Staley, University of Colorado - Boulder