Queer and Trans Educational Care: An Adaptable Framework Towards Democratizing and Decolonizing Education Systems

• In Event: Caring Leadership Amidst the Chaos: Elevating Care as Resistance, Intervention, and Imperative

Abstract

Concerns about the uneven or unjust distribution of care as a rationale to leave, undo, or undermine public education systems presents a challenge to those who understand care work as integral to the learning and well-being of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, queer, and trans communities. Discourses surrounding selective care and “limited care” (Author, 2021) continue to be used for harmful or colonizing purposes (Bang et al., 2018; Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Wilson, 2009). For example, guided by an individualist, zero-sum conception of care, which treats education as a vehicle for socioeconomic mobility, social conservatives seek access to public resources for use by their own families (e.g., voucher programs supporting private schools; Cowen, 2024). Yet, when the state ignores the private sphere or under-appreciates care labor, gendered and racialized assumptions of value can harm or exploit women, queer, and trans teachers, students, and mothers, especially in Black and Brown communities (Brockenbrough, 2012; Pascoe, 2007; Tronto, 2013; Woodly, 2022). This study explores the question: How might leaders invested in equity understand and navigate between state and family responsibilities in school-based care?

This need to clarify how “care” can support equitable learning and well-being offers two opportunities: (1) identify conditions of collective thriving in public education systems; (2) map out how care practices toward thriving can be distributed across schools, families, and communities. Already, education scholars have developed critical care ethics (Antrop‐González, R., & De Jesús, 2006; Author, 2021; Curry, 2016; McKinney de Roysten et al., 2017; Valenzuela, 1999) to highlight problems with traditional conceptualizations of care, which depict it as feminized, interpersonal labor (Malatino, 2020; Noddings, 2013) and describe paternalistic reforms to “protect” or “fix” children (Meiners, 2007; Singh, 2021). Bridging this work with studies informed by queer and trans (QT) theory, this systematic review explores how care work can enact liberatory futures through relinquishing attachments to binary and gender-normative categories and traditional family dynamics as models for systemic (re)design.

Following PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021), we reviewed 1,245 scholarly sources, identifying 258 that met our inclusion criteria for transformative care work from a QT lens. We address these RQs: (1) How do QT studies conceptualize relationships between gender, racial, and economic systems of oppression in PK-12 education?; (2) How do QT studies conceptualize how care can transform structural determinants of educational inequality?

Based on our analysis, we develop “QT Educational Care” (QTEC): a systems-focused framework defining care as a collective responsibility to enact conditions characterized by QT principles of dignity and intimacy and learning practices centering play and imagination. QTEC treats the triad of students, families, and educators as a site of political contest and creativity and central focus of investigation. We offer eight translatable strategies for leaders: (counter)storytelling; critical literacy and critical affective literacy; strategic empathy; playful talk; making and tinkering; role play; policy invitation; and youth participatory action research. QTEC entails the embedding of QT ways of knowing in education systems, and collective learning about new forms of being and relationality in and through learning.

Authors

• Andrew Stein, Northwestern University

• Benjamin C. Kennedy, University of California - San Diego

• William French, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Mollie McQuillan, University of Wisconsin - Madison