It’s a Queer World: Synthesizing Popular Culture as Queer Education Curriculum

• In Event: “We Recruit”: Sexuality and Gender, “Queer Positive” Curriculum, and Teacher Knowledge and Identity

Abstract

Overview. Writing and research about LGBTQ issues in teacher education look largely at the curriculum and pedagogy of our classrooms and programs. My work with colleagues to rethink and evaluate diversity curricula suggests that a structural social justice approach to LGBTQ issues must account for the external curriculum preservice teachers experience. Preservice teachers increasingly encounter queer popular culture. The diversity approach in our programs may be enhanced by helping students reflect on and synthesize these “authentic” queer encounters. This paper merges recommendations previous research with an inquiry of two popular media to consider how to draw on shared experience as part of our enacted curriculum.
Framework. Howard (1999) notes, “We cannot teach what we do not know”. Thus, many teacher education programs develop opportunities for students to encounter diversity (Gay 2002; Houser 2008)Other researchers found that effective social justice teachers brought experience with diversity into their teacher education programs rather than acquiring these dispositions through their program (Haberman and Post 1998; Merryfield 2000). Researchers agree that experience is more generative if space for reflection is created to contextualize experiences and its relation to beliefs.
The purpose of experience is to orient students toward a social justice framework (Gorski 2009). In defining social justice, Fraser (Fraser 1995; Fraser and Honneth 2003) argues that justice is a structural matter that requires social redress. She proposes a two-pronged approach that maintains/recognizes group identity and diversity while redistributing resources that enable access to political, economic, and social structures. Applied to LGBTQ issues, her argument suggests that we must transform heteronormative structures alongside efforts to correct homophobic acts in schools.
Analysis. Unable to compel a common experience to center in the classroom, this query draws upon the “It’s Get Better” campaign and Glee as cultural icons students are likely to encounter and that are relevant to the intended diversity curriculum. I conduct a queer content analysis of the show and project that examines what constitutes queer knowledge, whether LGBTQ issues are positioned as individual or group, and who creates/receives the messages. The categories of inquiry arise from previous research on a social justice, diversity curriculum (Schmidt, Chang et al. 2010; Carolan-Silva, Schmidt et al. 2011). These findings suggest that preservice teachers…
1) agree that LGBTQ persons should have the same rights as their heterosexual peers including protection by teachers
2) framed LGBTQ issues as individual, not group/structural injustice
3) draw on encounters with LGBTQ persons, homophobia, and heteronormativity to synthesize diversity concepts
Findings and implications. Social justice theorists emphasize that redress must run through social structures. Preliminary analysis of these popular media suggests that they attempt to critique and reflect society. LGBTQ issues are predominantly individual matters and redress means changing the homophobic mentality of bullies and administrators. Such knowledge is the prevalent experience we can anticipate our students bringing to the classroom. Yet it is counter to the dispositions we theoretically desire. The full paper will look at how to develop curriculum around these initially flawed experiences to move them into a group-conscious/structural dialogue.

Author

• Sandra Schmidt, Teachers College, Columbia University