Performing Professionalism in Teacher Education: A Theoretical Essay 

• In Event: Queering Pedagogy, Professionalism, and Care: Learning From Queer and Trans Educators Across Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This theoretical essay positions teacher professionalism as performance. I leverage Butler’s (1988) conceptualization of gender as a performance to illustrate how gender, whiteness, and teaching are performed through ritualized cultural acts to uphold hegemonic constructions of professionalism. These three play a considerable role in how schooling is structured to reproduce cultural behavioural norms by maintaining hegemonic power. To begin, I draw connections between Butler’s (1988) theory of gender performativity and P-20 education. Then I move into whiteness and teaching as performance in P-20 education, respectively.

Overview
Gender performance in P-20 education is rooted in the cisheteronormative culturally recognizable performance that Butler (1988) described as a “stylized repetition of acts” (p. 481). This upholds the gender binary, or “the cultivation of bodies into discrete sexes with ‘natural’ appearances and ‘natural’ heterosexual dispositions” (Butler, 1988, p. 486). Deviation from the expected gender performances is dangerous and subject to scrutiny and punishment (Butler, 1988). Blount (2000) corroborates this idea in traditional school settings, describing how teachers have historically been required to reproduce and uphold gender norms for their students; and those who deviate are pushed out of the profession.

Warren (1999) uses Butler’s (1988) framework to illustrate how whiteness is performance. He describes race as a “historically and socially constructed category,” which alludes to its instability and performative nature (Warren, 1999, p. 195). Therefore, whiteness as a racial category also denotes performance through cultural acts. Ahmed (2006) claims that heterosexuality and whiteness are linked due to their ties to colonialism; wherein bodies that are oriented differently through race and/or sexuality are considered out of line with both whiteness and compulsory heterosexuality. Ahmed (2006) then calls for queer people to imagine a world outside the hegemonic orientation towards straightness and whiteness.

Further, Sarason (1999) describes teaching as a performance art and ties teaching to the feminization of the profession due to its history. Sarason (1999) also argues that “teachers teach the way they have been taught;” which means this social reproduction of teaching is passed down culturally through generations in the same way gender and race have been (p. 109). hooks (1994) points to the power differential between teachers and students and how this impacts the ‘theatrical production’ of classes and class community. This power of holding authority and control over the content and behaviour expected in class speaks to the performative nature of teaching.

Scholarly Significance
Unpacking how teachers in the U.S. and Canada are required to perform and assimilate to cisheteronormative conceptions of gender will help create a more equitable environment for everyone. This must start by understanding how preservice teachers are trained and held to norms of professionalism that centralize dominant identities. Author 4 (2017b) calls this khaki drag, or performing white, cis, heteronormative professionalism to maintain access to educational spaces. Excavating the root of where these forced performances of professionalism are hidden within curricular requirements will help bring to light areas for improvement in teacher education.     

Author

• Laura Shelton
  Presenting Author