Freak and Fraud: Exploring Notions of Visibility and Validation for Transgender Music Teachers

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Examining the Experiences of Queer and Transgender Students and Teachers: Safety, Visibility, and Education Policy (Table 7)

Abstract

In the field of education Rands (2009) communicated a typology of the role of gender identity in classrooms, offering that the gender complex classroom, where the gender of students is not assumed to be either male or female and is seen as more fluid, was an ideal learning environment. Even as Rands has formulated a positive, open approach to affirming gender identity in schools, concerns of transgender and gender expansive educators go unmentioned. In the field of music education, studies have focused on the experiences of transgender students, but only one study has addressed the experiences of a transgender teacher. Bartolome (2016) followed the path of a transgender music education student through pre-service teaching into teaching. This dissertation will be an important contribution to the literature, picking up where Bartolome left off, by seeking out the testimony of three experienced, in-service transgender music educators and illuminating the ways in which their perspectives and gender identity intersects with their identity as teacher, as well as their relationships with students and the larger school community.

Author

• M. Miguel Rowland, Robeson Elementary School, Champaign Unit 4
  Presenting Author