Trans Pedagogies in Practice: Learning From Trans Community Educators

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

Abstract

Objectives
In the 1990s and early 2000s, a phenomenon emerged that was colloquially referred to as the “Trans 101” workshop. The workshops responded to a genuine need for universities and PK-12 schools to better meet the needs of transgender people and typically focused on teaching a (presumably cisgender) audience about transgender people. However, this strategy rests on an idealistic premise: if only we explain ourselves, perhaps institutions will change their ways. This study explores how we might approach educational engagement with trans experience differently. How is trans educational practice different when it takes place outside the constraints of formal schooling? What lessons might trans community-based educators offer to teachers in PK-12 schools?

Theoretical framework
Our study is informed by theorizing in trans studies, which emphasizes the refusal of a stable subject position while simultaneously seeking to address the material conditions facing trans people (Aizura et al., 2020). Informed by Foucault’s (1977) conceptualization of schooling as a disciplinary institution, we examine out-of-school educational contexts as generative sites for the development of critical pedagogies (e.g. Freire, 1970; Grande, 2003; hooks, 1994; McLaren, 2002) and embodied learning (Vossoughi et al, 2020) that may be more hospitable to knowledge derived from trans experience than typical PK-12 schools.

Data sources
We conducted interviews, including an artifact discussion component, with 11 community-based educators in the 2020/2021 academic year. Interviews were conducted via Zoom and lasted between 40 and 130 minutes. Participants included filmmakers, artists, activists, and leaders of non-school-based programs for children and youth. All were invited to participate because they 1) were widely respected among trans communities and 2) their work functioned in some capacity to educate the public about sex and gender in ways that were different from traditional didactic instruction in schools.

Analysis
The analysis included several rounds of coding and memoing. First, we read each transcript and wrote memos on emerging themes. Then, we coded each transcript inductively and identified 4-5 key themes within each interview. We then looked across these themes to develop categories and codes, which we applied to all interview transcripts in NVivo. We then reviewed all excerpts under each category and wrote memos to document our emerging understandings of themes across the interviews.

Substantiated conclusions
The work of the trans community educators in this study most diverged from the traditional “trans 101” workshop in that they were committed to complicating, rather than simplifying, how we think about trans identity and gender more broadly. Further, many of the participants approached their audiences as knowledgeable, diverse in experience and opinion, and worthy of being “invited in” to a conversation about gender and embodiment and engaging with it on their own terms. In this way, we argue that these educators engaged in a “critical trans pedagogy” (Author 4, 2017a).

Scholarly significance of the study
This research will extend existing theory in critical pedagogy and popular education and may assist teachers and teacher educators in complex and rigorous teaching about gender through an engagement with trans knowledge and cultural production.

Authors

• Harper B. Keenan, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Lee Iskander, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author