Rethinking School Spaces for Transgender, Non-binary, and Gender Diverse Youth


Book Description

Positing the washroom as an onto-epistemological site which exemplifies the way in which school spaces govern how gender is experienced, normalized, and understood by youth, this text illustrates how current school policies and practices around bathrooms fail to dismantle cisnormativity and recognize trans lives. Drawing on media-policy analysis, empirical study, and arts-based methodologies, it demonstrates how school spaces must be re-thought via a trans-centred epistemology, to be reflected in teacher education, policy, and curricula. Beginning with a review of the theoretical constellation of the heterotopia and critical trans-ing informing the analysis of data, it moves to offer a critical media and policy analysis of how trans and gender-diverse students are de-limited, erased, or harmed. This position is supported by analysis of empirical data from a school bathroom project, including student photographs of washrooms, and other visual expressions of gender-diverse and gender-complex individuals. These elements—the media-policy analysis, the empirical study, and the archival online material—ultimately combine to offer new justifications for critical trans-informed policies and practices in education that recognize and centre trans and gender-diverse knowledges, expressions, and experiences. Centring the specific and nuanced debates around trans phenomena via an innovative methodology, it makes a unique and extremely timely contribution to the debate on gender-inclusive bathrooms, as well as trans rights to self-identification. As such, it will appeal to scholars, postgraduates, educators, and faculty working in the area of gender and sexuality in education, with interests in trans phenomena.




Rethinking School Spaces for Transgender, Non-binary and Gender Diverse Youth


Book Description

"Positing the washroom as an epistemological site which exemplifies the way in which school spaces govern how gender is experienced, normalized, and understood by youth, this text illustrates how current school policies and practices around bathrooms fail to dismantle cisnormativity and recognize trans lives. Drawing on media-policy analysis, empirical study, and arts-based methodologies, it demonstrates how school spaces must be re-thought via a trans-centred epistemology, to be reflected in teacher education, policy, and curricula. Beginning with a review of the theoretical constellation of the heterotopia and critical trans-ing informing the analysis of data, it moves to offer a critical media and policy analysis of how trans and gender diverse students are de-limited, erased, or harmed. This supported by analysis of empirical data from a school bathroom project, including student photographs of washrooms, and other visual expressions of gender diverse and gender complex individuals. These elements - the media-policy analysis, the empirical study, and the archival online material - ultimately combine to offer new justifications for critical trans-informed policies and practices in education that recognize and centre trans and gender diverse knowledges, expressions and experiences. Centering the specific and nuanced debates around trans issues via an innovative methodology, it makes a unique and extremely timely contribution to the debate on gender neutral bathrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars, postgraduates, and faculty working in the area of gender and sexuality in education, with interests in trans issues"--




Transnational Filipina/o/x Youth, Intersectional Identities, and School-Community Partnerships


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth examination of how Filipina mothers, serving as migrant caregivers, and their children navigate the experiences of family separation and reunification through Canada’s Live-in/Caregiver Program (L/CP). It analyses how Filipina/o/x youth understand their political agency, the legacy of colonialism, and their sense of identity and belonging in urban schools through school-community partnerships. The work examines the global migration experiences of transnational Filipina/o/x youth and their mothers in nation-states such as Canada through the lens of the global domestic work industry. It connects the theoretical frameworks of critical and intersectional feminisms within a transnational context to the specificity of settler colonialism within Canada, a white settler nation-state. It underscores the pivotal role of school-community partnerships in facilitating the political agency of Filipina mothers and their children, and in shaping Filipina/o/x youths’ transnational identities through equitable educational policies and, ultimately, im/migration policies and practices. This book is a valuable addition to the discourse on global migration, transnational feminism, and critical race studies in education. The book primarily targets scholars, researchers, graduate students in the fields of Gender Studies, Education, Psychology, Mental Health, Immigration/Transnational Studies, and Asian Canadian Studies. It is particularly relevant for those with specialist knowledge in Gender and Immigration Studies, as well as Equity and Social Justice Education, which includes a focus on supporting the participation of racialized im/migrants in the school system.




Towards a Queer and Trans Ethic of Care in Education


Book Description

Synthesizing conversations from across gender and sexuality education, race and settler-colonialism studies, and care work literature, Towards a Queer and Trans Ethic of Care in Education explores how queer and trans teachers of colour understand and practice care. Woven between narratives and scholarly literature, Owis theorizes a unique and radical new way of conceptualizing and practicing care in K-12 educational settings, proposing a "queer and trans ethic of care." This new ethic of care is argued for as both a theory and practice. It aims to challenge the embeddedness of white supremacy and settler-colonialism in K-12 classrooms, while offering a framework that can be applied in personal relationships, teaching and research in communities and higher education. Drawing on a study of participants in the Ontario educational system, Owis examines why care is critical in the community and in practice as an education. They then ask how a queer ethic of care can help us understand what it means to heal, thrive beyond survival, and provide care outside of the matrix of white supremacy and settler-colonialism. These considerations are crucially linked to critical points of intervention in academia, schooling environments and policy at the provincial, federal and global level, demonstrating the need for a radical, systemic overhaul to the way educational institutions practice and understand care. Challenging, educating and offering new ways of thinking about care for and with QTBIPOC communities, it will appeal to scholars and researchers of gender and sexuality studies, race and ethnicity in education, sociology, social work, and diversity and equity in education.




Understanding Whole-School Approaches to LGBTQ+ Inclusion


Book Description

The book provides a comprehensive theoretical exploration of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools drawing on critical insights from across the disciplines of sociology, psychology, history, and queer theory to present a robust theoretical foundation for school-wide approaches to LGBTQ+ inclusion. Examining key concepts such as minority stress and ‘post-gay’ identities, it offers a nuanced understanding of the historical attitudes and systemic oppression faced by the LGBTQ+ community. The chapters construct an ecological framework that highlights the unique challenges encountered by LGBTQ+ students and teachers in educational settings. This framework serves as the basis for a model that advocates for proactive measures in fostering an inclusive environment in schools. This includes the development of inclusive policies, practices, culture, and curricula. The book concludes by contemplating the potential applications of this model in Higher Education, extending its relevance beyond K-12 schools to also include universities and colleges. This volume will be valuable resource for researchers, scholars, educators, and policymakers interested in promoting LGBTQ+ inclusion in educational institutions, and with interests in gender and education, whole-school approaches, LGBTQ+, and diversity and inclusion more broadly.




All About Black Girl Love in Education


Book Description

Drawing from bell hook’s 1999 book All About Love, this volume builds on theories of love as they relate to Black Girlhood in education, shedding light on educational practices rooted in love and exploring strategies for centering Black girls and love in Grades K-12. Bringing together voices of scholars, poets, and visual artists who theorize Black Girlhood, the collection pays particular attention to practices, acts, communities, and pedagogies of love. An antidote to the physical, emotional, and psychological violence to which Black girls in the United States are subjected on a daily basis at the hands of those who work in schooling environments, it shows how teachers, school leaders, community educators, and researchers might use love as a framework for changing the narrative and experiences of Black girls. Crucially, though, in conversation with negative aspects of how Black girls experience school, it argues for a shift in perspective that highlights the myriad of ways Black girls do and can receive love within schooling spaces. Read through one of the most influential Black feminist scholars of all time, it presents a novel alternative to the dearth of research that focuses on the violence, neglect, and exclusion Black girls experience in schools, expands the scholarship on Black girls, (re)centers love in the work that educators do, and connects theoretical orientations that characterize Black girl love to practice both in and outside of classrooms. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and educators working in the fields on urban education, race and ethnicity in education, gender studies, literacy, multicultural education, and diversity and equity in education.




Gendered and Sexual Norms in Global South Early Childhood Education


Book Description

This volume examines gendered and heteronormative norms embedded within early childhood education (ECE) in the Global South, including Brazil, China, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam. In this book, the contributors explore how gender, culture, religion, masculinity, sport, and conservative politics intersect to perpetuate and resist gendered and sexual norms. The book presents a range of possibilities for disrupting and challenging these norms within early childhood educational contexts. Grounded in colonial and postcolonial discourses, the book emphasises the entanglement of gender and sexuality in ECE with legacies of colonisation and surrounding social and cultural dynamics, highlighting our responsibility to address gender inequalities and injustices. The book will appeal to researchers, faculty, and teacher educators with interests in gender and sexuality in education, international and comparative education, and early childhood education.




Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality


Book Description

There has never been a more important time for students to understand sexism, gender, and sexuality--or to make schools nurturing places for all of us. The thought-provoking articles and curriculum in this life-changing book, will be invaluable to everyone who wants to address these issues in their classroom, school, home, and community.




Vulnerability in Resistance


Book Description

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Başak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis




Critical Concepts in Queer Studies and Education


Book Description

This book advances a broad constellation of critical concepts situated within the field of queer studies and education. Collectively, the concepts take up a cross-section of scholarship that speaks to various political, epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical concerns. Given the ongoing global centrality of sociocultural and political developments related to the topic of LGBTQ in the twenty-first century, the concepts in this volume and the issues raised by each contributor will have wide international appeal among researchers, scholars, educators, students, and activists working at the intersection of queer studies and education.