Transgender Studies in Education: Taking Responsibility for Harms in Schools and Charting a New Path Forward

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Education lags behind our academic peers regarding research informed by transgender studies. For education institutions to meet the needs of transgender students and educators, we need to increase the scale, depth, and breadth of education research. The field of education must also acknowledge our responsibility in causing harms to transgender youth and professionals and avoid replicating the white-washed, deficit perspectives and pathologizing ideologies of previous research. This session will share conceptual and empirical scholarship aimed at facilitating deeper engagement with transgender communities as a way to ethically interrogate how K-12 education institutions reinforce and reproduce anti-transgender policies and practices. Collectively, the presenters provide the theoretical framing, methodological guidelines, and empirical exemplars needed to move the field of transgender studies in education forward.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Liz Meyer, University of Colorado - Boulder

Participants

• Christine Hamlett, Newark Public Schools

• Padraig Hurley, South Orange-Maplewood School District

• Kelly Jenkins, Worcester Public Schools

• Harper Benjamin Keenan, University of British Columbia

• Melinda M. Mangin, Rutgers University

• Lance Trevor McCready, University of Toronto

• Mollie McQuillan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Liz Meyer, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Mario I Suarez, Utah

• Montrose Neufeld, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Lee Airton, Queen's University