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Queer Issues and the Study of Education and Culture - CSSE pre-conference 2009
I just got back from CSSE (Canadian Society for the Study of Education) at Congress 2009 in Ottawa at Carleton University and the pre-conference on Queer Issues was the highlight for me. The folks at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services (ISMSS) at the University of Alberta organized this event and intend to continue it in 2010. The day began with opening remarks by Dr. Andre Grace from the University of Alberta and then sessions began. There were some very interesting papers and discussions throughout the day.
The first session I attended included my presentation based on my book: Gender, Bullying, and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in Schools along with two other papers: Fiona Benson's (McGill University) work on "queer care" and the tensions of queer educators working with and supporting queer students -- specifically in the field of teacher education. She builds on the work of Nel Noddings but brings up some important tensions and unique issues related to negotiating degrees of outness and disclosure. I appreciated her insight on the struggles of trying to best support queer students who may or may not be out and the emotional energy and time that is often required to work with this population. This is usually due to the dearth of "out" GLBT faculty in Universities and particularly in Faculties of Education. Therefore, those profs who are out bear a significant burden and feel a responsibility to listen and be accessible to the queer students who are struggling with negotiating their identities with their future profession and all the land mines that entails. Thank you, Fiona, for this important work.
Kris Wells' (University of Alberta) presented on working with trans youth and read to us from the new children's book 10,000 Dresses. I was thrilled to learn about this new resource for younger children since, as Kris pointed out, gender issues are more prominent in many elementary schools than issues related to sexual orientation. He also talked about a new publication that he co-authored on working with Trans youth in schools. I look forward to getting a copy of it when it comes out!
After the morning break I attended a presentation by Line Chamberland (Universite de Quebec a Montreal) that presented findings from a survey on school climate and GLBT issues in CEGEPs in Quebec. They conducted interviews and distributed surveys in CEGEPs around Quebec to learn about homophobia and student experiences at these institutions. For those outside of Quebec, CEGEPS are 2-3 year schools that bridge high school and university, or lead to a terminal professional degree - sort of a combo grade 12/13 and community college-type school. After her presentation, I heard a great paper from James McNinch (University of Regina) who was investigating the experience of two-spirit youth in Saskatchewan. Following this, I listened to Catherine Taylor (University of Winnipeg) present the data from the first EGALE school-climate survey. It is exciting to have the first phase of the results available for scholars and community advocates to use to support grassroots and other efforts to improve the safety of Canadian schools for GLBT youth and their families.
I also went to hear Erica Meiners' (Northeastern Illinois University) paper about Department of Defense schools being piloted in Chicago and offered a social justice critique of this program. It was great having the perspectives of a Canadian who has been in the U.S. working and researching for the past 10 years. I was also pleased to hear Karleen Pendleton-Jimenez (Trent University) and Isabel Killoran (York University) share stories from their anthology Unleashing the Unpopular: Talking about Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools. This book is a great resource for anyone trying to talk about gender and sexual diversity issues with pre-service teachers as it includes the voices of children of GLBT parents, personal narratives from pre-service teachers and a case study of how a trans student was supported by the Toronto District School Board to transition in school. The chapters are short and accessible and can act as great conversation-starters to start students thinking about these issues.
As you can tell from this brief overview of just a few of the papers, the day was filled with really interesting presentations and great discussions and responses. it was invigorating to be in a room of other Canadian researchers who are engaging meaningfully with issues related to gender and sexual diversity. We had great discussions over lunch and learned more about the growing success of Camp Fyrefly The turnout this year was quite strong, and this conference is sure to continue growing and evolving. I am looking forward to next year!! Another big thanks to Andre, Kris, and Sarah for making this happen.
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Lack of desire in pre-service teachers to address gender issues
Thank you Liz for another informative blog related to gender diversity and queer issues, especially in relation to pre-service teacher education.
I look forward to your blogs immensely as they are rich in information and literature references about these issues.
I have just finished tutoring a "Sociology of Education" unit as part of the undergraduate teacher education degree here in Ballarat in rural south eastern Australia. I have major issues with the content of the unit (but as I am not the lecturer and just a PhD student doing some tutoring am limited in how I can change the content). Over a 12 week semester we cover a different sociological 'issue' every week including cultural diversity, gender, schools and communities, Indigenous education etc etc with the resultant lack of depth in any one issue. I feel that in some ways the unit perpetuates stereotypes and bigotry rather than challenging it based on the way the content is organised. However, that is not why I am responding to your blog.
This week we covered gender in schools. I took the approach in the tutorial of looking at how children's play activities and toys are so heavily marketed and produced along gender lines. I then took the students through a paper presented at AERA in 2008 from a New Zealand scholar about a high school male PE teacher who challenges normative gender discourses both in his PE pedagogy and how he conducts himself personally. It was a very powerful piece (Fitzpatrick, 2008).
The preservice teachers, however, seemed very uninspired about the article, and I think really did not see their roles as future elementary and high school teachers as being about challenging the status quo. The typical response was things are better today than they were in past years. I feel they are merely concerned with learning how to 'teach' the curriculum and how to 'assess' that content to show students have 'mastered' the particular knowledge and skills deemed important. It has been incredibly frustrating to me as I read about different pedagogies, immerse myself in Freire's writings, and be confronted with pre service teacher indifference; attitudes of what do I need to pass the unit!!
So your blogs provide me with literature and ideas that I can try to integrate into this particular unit over the next couple of years (provided I am still tutoring in this unit). It is difficult however when the unit is constructed very much about the "Other" and no depth or time is allocated to explore the wider social and economic and cultural reality of particular social groups before their education in schools is even considered.
So thank you for keeping gender and queer issues in education at the forefront. It is extremely helpful to novice researchers and beginning academic teachers such as myself, even as far away as Australia, to be exposed to such passionate and committed socially just academics such as yourself.
References
Fitzpatrick, K. (2008). Critical approaches to physical education: Gender, sexuality and resistance. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference, New York, March 2008
pushing the gender envelope in teacher ed
Hi Tim-
Thanks so much for your comments and i'm glad to hear that you've found some useful resources via my blog. I agree with many of the frustrations you expressed: many pre-service teachers do not want to address controversial issues or make their students "uncomfortable" by questioning the status quo. An excellent resource that I have used to push through this resistance is Kevin Kumashiro's work: Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Anti-oppressive Pedagogy, and a later book titled: Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice. He talks about many similar challenges and offers theoretical and practical suggestions for helping students work through "crisis" and recognize the pedagogical value in learning through discomfort. I hope you will continue to share more stories of your experiences and other articles/references that you have found valuable!