Teacher Resistance, Compliance, and Resistant Compliance with Laws Mandating the Outing of Transgender Students

• In Event: Unforgetting Professional Ethics: Educators Resisting Policy Mandates Misaligned with Justice

Abstract

In a legal environment increasingly hostile to LGBTQ students, teachers are caught between legal compliance and their own professional values. I explore the factors that influence teacher legal decisions with the case of an Iowa law that mandates that teachers report any student’s request for a different name or pronoun to their parents. Drawing on 36 interviews with middle and high school teachers, I find that teachers practice a range of legal responses between resistance and compliance shaped by their own visibility to the law and understanding of their professional identities. This research advances empirical knowledge of how teachers navigate the everyday impact of anti-LGBTQ laws and theoretical knowledge of how organizational actors make legal decisions in repressive legal environments.

Author

• Xavier Fields, University of Michigan