Queering Literacy: Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of Queer Pedagogy in Preservice Teacher Education

• In Event: Critical Practices in English Teacher Education: Challenging, Refining, and Reimagining Teacher Learning

Abstract

In this study, we wanted to learn what opportunities and challenges queer pedagogical perspectives might hold for beginning Humanities teachers who are making sense of equity-oriented teaching. Specifically, we leveraged the context of a university-based teacher education course that we co-taught to explore these questions: How did our drawing on queer pedagogy as a tool for teaching take shape in the teaching of this course? And what were the consequences of our efforts? Drawing on queer pedagogical perspectives, we conceptualized queering as involving questioning, feeling discomfort, and implicating the self. Bringing that lens to bear on our data, we present three key moments in the class to show what queering looked like in this context and how preservice teachers responded.

Authors

• Sara Staley, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Mollie V. Blackburn, The Ohio State University