attending college, is continuing to change, many students still interact with a system that privileges and affirms a single set of norms of thought and experience, and excludes or marginalizes experiences outside those norms (Bullen, 2012;Harper, 2013;Museus & Quaye, 2009). If a student believes their needs to be unimportant, or excluded from the norms of the campus environment, they are at greater risk of not persisting through to graduation (Danowitz & Tuitt, 2011;Derosa & Dolby, 2014). Part of what is necessary for students who have historically been marginalized within systems of higher education are spaces in which they can feel integrated into the campus culture and environment, rather than experiencing hostility (Fine, 2012). Student affairs professionals, the administrative staff who work with students to shape their out-of-classroom college experiences, have the ability to help create these spaces on campus that students perceive to be welcoming and that tend to foster student success in college (Museus & Ravello, 2010). This article seeks to understand if the use of transgressive teaching can connect the needs of students who identify as both people of color and as members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and/or Trans* (LGBT*) communities and the practices of student affairs professionals. Additionally, this study seeks to understand how those connections can help students to feel more connected to the campus, and persist to graduation.
Defining Transgressive TeachingEngaged pedagogy, an umbrella term used to describe a variety of critically minded approaches to education, is described by bell hooks (1994) as an approach to teaching that seeks to develop each person personally and spiritually, in addition to rather than solely intellectually. It can be summarized as an approach to teaching that addresses the wholeness of each student as a human being (Florence, 1998), and engages a mutual vulnerability as students and teachers learn together in their respective roles (Berry, 2010). The definition I have constructed, and will use transgressive teaching to mean for this article is: an approach to engaging with students in spaces of learning that seeks to move beyond the traditional boundaries of teacher and student roles, to engage the entirety of each persons' being, acknowledge the value of their experiences and perspectives, and connects with and to the potential for learning and teaching in a mutually constructed process of growth and empowerment.
Literature ReviewThere are three major areas of research that need to be addressed in order to frame this study. The first area of literature covers the use of transgressive teaching in student affairs. This is important because it addresses the areas in which this topic has and has not been covered in order to better understand the context in which this study takes place. Additionally, while there is a host of literature addressing the use of transgressive teaching in classroom settings, specifically in K-12 teaching, little has been written about the use of ...