"Passing" and "Policing" in the Profession: LGBTI Teachers and Heteroprofessionalism

• In Event: Negotiating and Constructing Identities Across Learning Contexts

Abstract

There is a dearth of research that considers how discourses of professionalism intersect with gender and sexual diversity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) teachers in a Canadian context. Through autoethnography and policy analysis, this study examines how LGBTI teachers experience and respond to conceptualizations of teacher professionalism that dictate queerness—particularly “visible” queerness—as contrarian to the neutral subjectivity that teachers are expected to uphold. These heteroprofessional expectations, amongst others, both constrain and harm LGBTI teachers and can have additional untold impacts on students and the safety of school environments. This research begins to conceptualize a queer professionalism for teachers that challenges how heteronormativity is entrenched within Canadian school policies and practices.

Authors

• Jamie Anderson, University of Calgary

• Tonya D. Callaghan, University of Calgary