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“Queer pedagogy seeks to both uncover and disrupt hidden curricula of heternormativity as well as to develop classroom landscapes and experiences that create safety for queer participants.”
Thomas-Reid, M. (2018). Introduction to Queer Pedagogy. Warwick International Higher Education Academy.
Retrieved 07/02/2021 by: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academy/funding/2016-17fundedprojects/interdisciplinarityprojects/genderinclusiveteaching/queerpedagogy/We suggest that “queer conversation” is a potentially powerful way to open space for non-normative desires to emerge in the classroom.
As other scholars, such as bell hooks (2010), have argued, conversation is fundamental to an engaged pedagogy that allows students and teachers to explore ideas in an open and fluid way. This is because conversation—unlike other methods of teaching—is more likely to break down the binary relationship between teacher and student. For example, conversation is often less scripted than a lecture or seminar discussion and offers a mode of engagement that allows students and teachers to give voice to more nascent thoughts and ideas as they emerge.Through its mutuality and fluidity, conversation has the possibility of transforming classroom dynamics. As hooks argues, by “learning and talking together, we break the notion that our experience of gaining knowledge is private, individualistic, and competitive. (...) It may not be possible to definitively characterize queer conversation and doing so might be contrary to what we are trying to achieve. However, it may be helpful to identify some qualities of queer conversation. For us, queer conversation has three significant attributes. The first is a continual questioning and disruption of the conventional binary between teacher and student. (...) A second attribute of queer conversation is the disruption of norms around the boundaries of what can and cannot be said in the classroom—including what kinds of learning desires can be expressed. Queer conversation offers a means to give voice to things that might otherwise feel unnameable or unspeakable, and give space to subject positions that might otherwise seem untenable. (...) A third attribute of queer conversation is its capacity to make space for new potentialities and possibilities. If, as Muñoz writes, queer is about creating other ways of being in the world, and if, as Grosz writes, desire can be generative, then queer conversation is a practice that brings together the longing for something more with the generative capacity of desire in order to make new things possible.
Fraser, Jennifer, and Sarah Lamble. 2018. "Queer Desires and Critical Pedagogies in Higher Education: Reflections on the Transformative Potential of Non-Normative Learning Desires in the Classroom." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 7: 61-77.Queer theory recognizes the exorbitant normality in effect and the ways in which that normality ignores queer pleasures, practices, and bodies.
Neither does said pedagogy seek merely to trade one norm for another, to simply leave a heterosexist binary for a heterosexual–homosexual modality. A queer lens for pedagogical practice would mean observing the varied possibilities of expression of sexuality without the necessity of labels or fixed identities. The recognition of different forms of expression would broaden an individual’s perspective, without that person having to necessarily adopt one of these fixed identities, allowing them to acknowledge these identities or even recognize themselves in said identities.
The term ‘queer,’ attempts to recover individuals erased by normalization, such as feminine boys, transsexual people, transgender people, and non-binary or gender non-conforming people among others.
For many American researchers and activists, the concept of queerness seeks to incorporate bodies that lost visibility during the gay movement of the 1960s and 1970s. From this perspective, the gay and lesbian movement was normalized as it adopted heteronormative practices (like marriage and the adoption of children) to gain public acceptance. Briefly retracing a possible historiography of queer theory, by the beginning of 1970s, gay literary studies began to flourish in the American academic world. As the gay movement started to seek out and create its own culture and identity, it began to look not only to the past but also to the future. In the 1980s, U.S. political activism, still maintaining its attention to the past, adopted the word ‘queer’ as a driver of the movement, a word that up until then, had been considered the most commonly used homophobic term in the country. In other words, the political movement reincorporated a term, previously carrying a negative connotation, trying, in this way, to deconstruct its pejorative meaning.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273Queer pedagogy, like queer theory, resists stable discrete definition.
Queer pedagogy’s entrance into the academic literature has been likewise indeterminate. The literature on queer pedagogy is thus far comprised of a set of inquiries from a wide variety of fields, each of which works toward an understanding of queer pedagogy that makes sense for its own work and context but which do not rely on any broadly agreed-upon definition. Davey Shlasko, 2005: 123
Shlasko, G., D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38 (2), 123-134. Doi: 10.1080/10665680590935098Intimate relationship between pleasure and learning
How does the experience of learning become pleasurable? How does one take joy in having ideas, in changing one’s mind, in encountering the work of learning? What sorts of relations [exist] between learning to love and loving together? (Britzman, 2000, p.44). For a pedagogy to engage such questions seriously, it would have to invite sexuality into education, and not only in a “sexuality education” classroom. Sexuality would have to be considered as part of the very foundation upon which teaching and learning are built. Engaging with pleasure and desire in the work of learning means confronting some of our most basic assumptions about sexuality, childhood and teaching. Davey Shlasko, 2005: 127
Shlasko, G., D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38 (2), 123-134. Doi: 10.1080/10665680590935098
The word ‘queer’ brings with it a lot of history and baggage. Queer can be a term attributed to strangeness and difference, in Sara Ahmed’s (2018) words “…queer to describe anything that is noticeable because it is odd…”
It was (and in some cases still is) a term of abuse, hurled at those who were perceived as not fitting in to the norm and/or those attracted to the same sex. It is precisely from this history of abusive use that this term was reclaimed in the 1980s, Judith Butler (1993: 18) emphasises the point here: ““Queer” derives its force precisely through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked to accusations, pathologization, insult.” Queer has also been used as an umbrella term in lieu of LGBTQ+. Queer theory, developed in the 1990s (with many influential precursors), uses queer more as something that is done. It is “…a theoretical approach…to question the categories and assumptions on which current popular and academic understandings are based.” (Barker, Scheele, 2016: 15) In other words, queer can be used as a deconstructive tool to trouble areas of academia and beyond. It is often used in an interdisciplinary way; as an approach which developed outside of the academy with deep activist roots, it often claims to be anti-disciplinary, choosing to operate in spaces in-between in order to challenge various disciplinary spaces. Queer is not only about holding others (people, disciplines, institutions, spaces etc.) accountable, it is also about holding yourself accountable and always remaining self-reflexive.
Ayres, H. (2019). Introduction to queer pedagogy. Warwick International Higher Education Academy. Ανακτήθηκε στις 2/7/2021 από: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academy/funding/2016-17fundedprojects/interdisciplinarityprojects/genderinclusiveteaching/queerpedagogy/ Sister Outsider Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press Feminist Series.Queer pedagogy, based in these ideas of a queer theory against normalization, seeks to contribute to practices of education, analyzing the fluidity and the mobility of society and affirming that educational institutions should not attach themselves to one set model, since these ideals end up alienating, even excluding, certain individuals.
For Britzman (1998), queer theory transgresses seemingly stable representations and, in this sense, queer pedagogy works to question situations of apparent normality in the classroom and concerns itself with the social production of what is learned. Queer pedagogy does not seek the ‘correct’ method or the ‘right’ questions, but rather the possibility to question our practices or notions of equality and acceptance. Just as queer theory sought to distance itself from the markers of gender associated with gay and lesbian studies, queer pedagogy offers everyone involved in academic spaces, whether they be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, etc., the possibility of understanding issues of sexuality from a new angle. As Louro (2001) explains: “(…) a queer pedagogy and curriculum ‘speak’ to everyone and aren’t only directed at those who recognize themselvesin this subject position, that is, as queer subjects.”3 (p. 256).
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273Queer Theory offers methods of critiques to mark the repetitions of normalcy as a structure and as a pedagogy.
Whether defining normalcy as an approximation of limits and mastery, or as renunciations, as the refusal of difference itself, Queer Theory insists on posing the production of normalization as a problem of culture and of thought. Deborah Britzman, 1995: 154.
Britzman, D. (1995). Is there a queer pedagogy? Or, stop reading straight. Educational Theory 45(2), 151-165.
Queer pedagogy, in addition to other goals, proposes to analyze heterosexist society and the ways in which its practices can generate symbolic instances of violence (or, in many cases, real violence: physical, moral, or social) for bodies that do not fit into the established norms.
As Miskolci (2012) writes, “…the violent recusal of forms of expression of gender or sexuality that diverge from the standard is preceded and even supported by a process of heterosexist education, or in other words, by a hidden curriculum committed to the imposition of compulsory heterosexuality.” (p. 35). Current teaching methods, in general, through textbooks, start from the assumption of compulsory heteronormativity and heterosexism. That is to say, there is a certain maintenance of the hegemonic powers that are reproduced in various social situations.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
An important part of queer pedagogy is the notion of dismantling.
Queer pedagogy looks different in each instance – it will look different from discipline to discipline and even individually in those disciplines. An approach might go really well in one instance and the next year, with a new batch of students, it might not work so well. This is where reflexivity has to come in; queer is not so formulaic that it can be replicated each time. There is a list of case studies collected from around the University of Warwick for this guidance, that take a queer approach in some form or another and I hope they will show you the possibilities and variety that queer pedagogy can produce. An important part of queer pedagogy is the notion of dismantling. This means stripping concepts or ideas back and revealing the bare bones so that students may see how that concept/idea came to be. An example of this is the ways in which staff can overcome binary notions of gender in their teaching, language and presentation. In dismantling these binary notions of gender in oblique or subtle ways students may begin to view the binary as unnecessary and take these lessons forward. The queer notion of dismantling is not just key in regards to gender but can offer many different opportunities. Hannah Ayres, 2019
Ayres, H. (2019). Introduction to Queer Pedagogy. Warwick International Higher Education Academy.
Retrieved (06/01/2021) by https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academy/funding/2016-17fundedprojects/interdisciplinarityprojects/genderinclusiveteaching/queerpedagogy/
How a queer pedagogy can navigate the tension between more practical, classroom-oriented, and more theoretical issues, without neglecting either concern?
Queer pedagogies imply two sets of goals that are not easily compatible. While they can aim at a more inclusive proliferation of knowledge about sexualities and Identities, queer theory also always “attempts to conceptualise strategies that confound – through the very refusal of subjects to properly normalize themselves – the logic of institutional laws and the social practices that sustain these laws as normal and natural”. Therefore, the question arises how a queer pedagogy can navigate the tension between more practical, classroom-oriented, and more theoretical issues, without neglecting either concern.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
Queer Theory explores the interface of gender and sexuality with the cross-currents of race, ethnicity, social class, and individual bodily existence.
It contends that our culture imposes upon us multiple "essentialist" identities that fragment us into strings of hyphenated racial, ethnic, gender-related, and body-image labels-labels that we vainly hope will "name" each individual "me." In contrast to these traditional cultural assumptions, Queer Theory suggests that every part of our identity is both fluid and mixed, and is thus capable of transformation. In other words, it urges us toward the possibility that we are not trapped in those essentialist identities. Gust Yep, Karen Lovaas, & John Elia, 2003: xxi-xxii.
Yep, G., Lovaas, K., Elias, J. (2003). Introduction: queering communication: starting the conversation. Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s), Journal of Homosexuality, 45.
The binaries of colored/white, female/male, [heterosexual/homosexual], mind/body are collapsing.
We stand at a major threshold in the extension of consciousness, caught in the remolinos (vortices) of systemic change across all fields of knowledge. The binaries of colored/white, female/male, [heterosexual/homosexual], mind/body are collapsing. Living in nepantla, the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems, you are aware of the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories rendering the conventional labelings obsolete. Though these markings are outworn and inaccurate, those in power continue using them to single out and negate those who are "different" because of color, language, notions of reality, or other diversity. You know that the new paradigm must come from outside as well as within the system. Gloria Anzaldua, 2002: 541
Anzaldua, G. E. (2002). Now let us shift ... the path of conocimiento ... inner work, public acts. In G. E. Anzaldua & A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call home: RadicaL visions for transformation (pp. 540-578). New York: Routledge.
The visibility of non-heterosexual and non-reproductive sexualities and non-normative gender expressions marks an important starting point for a self-empowering questioning of normalised inequalities and hierarchies along the lines of sexuality and gender.
If sexuality and gender are exclusively contextualised in the framework of a normative understanding of biology as a drive towards heterosexuality and reproduction – a misunderstanding which has been convincingly shown to tell not even half the story– sex education is implicitly put into the service of a state and a society that propagates sexist and homophobic exclusions for the sake of preserving power imbalances that guarantee a precarious illusion of stability. A diversification of the curriculum and the fight against heterosexist discrimination in schools, then, are necessities that must afford knowledge of and power over their own bodies to all students.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
To tell students that “It’s okay to be gay” is dishonest, and transparent in its dishonesty.
After all, we do not tell them that it is okay to be heterosexual. The very pronouncement of tolerance assumes an underlying intolerance; to say it is okay to be gay or lesbian assumes that, although “okay’’ it is not normal or desirable. Furthermore, simply to tell students that they are okay belies the lived experiences of queer kids who feel themselves violently excluded from the realm of normal. They know very well that something is not okay. No amount of inclusion and tolerance can speak to that experience, unless it also provides space to critique heteronormativity and condemn its violences. Davey Shlasko, 2005: 126
Shlasko, G., D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38 (2), 123-134. Doi: 10.1080/10665680590935098
Progressive pedagogies are already queer theories.
What queer theory does to gender and sexuality discourses; progressive pedagogies do to mainstream education. Both critically examine processes of normalization and reproductions of power relationships, and complicate understandings of presumed binary categories (for example, man/woman, teacher/student). What we would name explicitly as queer pedagogy can be seen as emerging from the intersection of queer theory and progressive pedagogy (Spurlin, 2002), or more specifically as what happens when we apply queer theory to pedagogy (Luhman,1998). If progressive pedagogies are already queer (adj.) theories, then what remains is to queer them further by interrogating them through the lens of queer theory. For example, we might ask, “How does this pedagogy speak to educations take holders’ treatment of queers(n.) and queerness, of identity and normalcy?’ Davey Shlasko, 2005: 125
Shlasko, G., D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38 (2), 123-134. Doi: 10.1080/10665680590935098
If the classroom is a space in which knowledge is made to circulate, what kind of sexual knowledge should be allowed to become explicit in this space, and who gets to determine this?
At the heart of the public outrage over the policing of educational settings for children lie, we believe, three fundamental questions concerning the entanglement of epistemology and affect in the space of the classroom. 1) If the classroom is a space in which knowledge is made to circulate, what kind of sexual knowledge should be allowed to become explicit in this space, and who gets to determine this? 2) If the classroom is a space in which bodies and affects move, who may determine and control the flow of these affects as they pertain to individual sexual desires? And, finally, 3) how does the control of knowledge about sexuality intersect with the concrete and unruly affects that students and teachers bring to the highly hierarchical and state-controlled space of the classroom?
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
Queer pedagogies intersect with sex education, pedagogies of diversity, and pedagogies aimed at inclusion and empowerment.
In a school context, queer pedagogy asks, systematically, for makers of curricula to think about inclusion without constantly reifying the norm; it asks to shift the perspective on children from their appropriation as unwitting symbols of homophobic educational polemics to their recognition as unruly, vulnerable subjects in a hierarchical structure; it asks for critical, inclusive didactics to become obligatory in teacher training; it asks those in charge of curricular reform and the education of future teachers, more broadly, to not shy away from integrating a truly critical perspective in the highly structured and hierarchised space of schools. A queer pedagogy, in this sense, asks nothing more than to recognise and systematically frame all those involved in the complicated daily processes of learning and teaching as subjects and citizens with rights, without excluding them from the social sphere through the silencing of discussions about (sexual) identity.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
The first aspect of queer theory that is important for teachers to understand is the function of traditional heterosexual gender roles in reinforcing and maintaining harmful power dynamics in schools and society.
Many people have never questioned or examined how gender shapes our daily behaviors. The invisible nature of how masculinity and femininity are taught to children contributes to its strength. The purchasing of gender-"appropriate" toys and clothes for babies and young children is one-way adults perpetuate these lessons. This is a good example of how hegemony works. Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony explains how groups in power are able to maintain structures that benefit them through gaining the consent of subordinate groups (1995). It is not done through overt or forceful means, but rather through subtle, yet powerful, messages that repeatedly permeate daily life. Elizabeth Meyer, 2007: 17.
Meyer, E. (2007). But I’m not gay: What straight teachers need to know about queer theory. In N. Rodriguez & W. Pinar (Eds.), Queering straight teachers: Discourse and identity in education . New York: Peter Lang.
It is not the normalization of the ‘different’ that queer pedagogy proposes, is to ‘recognize difference outside the imperatives of normalcy.
It becomes necessary, then, to question and challenge dominant models in schools today so that socially favored groups are not the only ones visible, including as well other bodies that are still oppressed by different spheres of society. Queer pedagogy can help us in two ways. First, by problematizing the very school structure, the normalization of teaching per se and of the fixed and exclusionary content that is presented. Using a queer lens would involve, for example, discussing why terms like gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender do not find space in school vocabulary and why when they do, it is only through insults that should be silenced. More than prohibiting that students or even teachers use these words as insults, it is important to have a discussion of such use. To be gay or transgender is part of the identity of an individual and as such, should be included in the day-to-day just as ethnicity, religion, and many other aspects should be.5 As Britzman (2012) explains, queer pedagogy aims at ‘something different than a plea for inclusion or merely adding marginalized voices to an overpopulated curriculum.’ (p. 297). It is not the normalization of the ‘different’ that queer pedagogy proposes, is to ‘recognize difference outside the imperatives of normalcy.’ (p. 304).
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
Queer pedagogy calls for queer readings.
I mean queer readings in at least two ways: incorporating texts about and from the perspective of queer subjects, and reading queerly. The mainstream curriculum already includes, or at least allows for including, plenty of texts written by and about queers; it is just that we read them “straight”. ’If reading queerly is seeking out the queer or potentially queer meanings in a text, as in Morris’s (1998) explication of reading with a queer aesthetic, then reading straight is reading Around queer meanings and seeking out meanings that support normalcy. For example, it takes work to read the works of Walt Whitman or Shakespeare and avoid discussing their homoerotic implications, but high school English classes do it all the time. Queer educators (again—educators engaging in queer pedagogies) need to notice what it is that reading straight has prevented us from knowing,and invite the queer subtext back into our readings. In addition, we can search out contemporary texts to read queerly. This might include texts that are explicitly and unapologetically from a queer point of view, as well as texts that include closeted queer sub-text the way that so many read-straight classics do. An adventure some queer educator might even tackle a text that seems blatantly straight, that intends to support normalcy, and read it queerly for internal contradiction or other potentially queer understanding. Davey Shlasko, 2005: 127
Shlasko, G., D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38 (2), 123-134. Doi: 10.1080/10665680590935098
Queer Pedagogy aims at understanding individualities as part of our collectivities.
Maybe, even today, some people might question if it is really that important to consider the impact of normalization and heteronormativity on our teaching practices. Clearly, if we hold that education is a good and a necessity for everyone, then it is a necessity to consider the importance of sexual identity in our classroom, alongside considerations of race, gender, and disability. Along with the ideas proposed by Inclusive Pedagogy (Florian and Black-Hawkins, 2010, for instance), Public Pedagogy (Gutierez-Schmich and Heffernan, 2016) and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and all pedagogical practices and methodologies that seek models of education n which respect and presence are parts of our everyday practices, Queer Pedagogy aims at understanding individualities as part of our collectivities.
Neto, J., N. (2018). Queer pedagogy: approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy Futures in Education, 16 (5). doi: 10.1177/1478210317751273
