A Pretty Queer Thing: Thinking Queerly About Teachers' Gender and Sexual Diversity–Focused Professional Learning

• In Event: Learnings About Queer and Trans Issues Across Educational Setting

Abstract

Studying educators’ processes of learning to queer their practice has prompted us to think differently about our own praxis as teacher educators. Thinking differently has meant bringing the assumptions of queer theory and pedagogy to bear on our understanding of what is involved for teachers as they engage with difficult knowledge surrounding power, privilege, and oppression in schools. In other words, it has meant organizing our approach to professional development around the assumption that learning, like pedagogy, is a “pretty queer thing” (Luhmann, 1998). In this paper, we present a conceptual argument for bringing a queer pedagogical lens to bear on teachers’ professional learning in and beyond gender and sexual diversity-focused contexts.

Authors

• Sara Staley, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder