Nonbinary Beginning Teachers: Gender, Power, and Professionalism in Teacher Education

Abstract

Background/Context: In recent years, Canadian and U.S. schools have increased efforts to recognize gender diversity and reduce gender-based harassment, in large part because a growing number of young people are coming out as transgender or nonbinary in adolescence. However, little research explores nonbinary teachers’ experiences or investigates barriers to their entry into the profession. Purpose: This article begins to fill this gap by showing how six nonbinary beginning teachers navigated gender expectations, worked to appear professional, and negotiated racial and gendered power dynamics in their initial teacher education and preservice teaching. Participants: Participants include six nonbinary preservice teachers of diverse gender expression and racial and class backgrounds who were enrolled or had recently completed teacher education in North America when the study was conducted in 2018. Research Design: This qualitative study employed in-depth, phenomenological interviews. This article uses Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “willful subject” to consider how participants negotiated the relationship between their gender identities as nonbinary people and their nascent professional identities as teachers. Conclusion: These beginning teachers expressed concern about succeeding in their teacher education programs and worried about how others perceived them because of the expectation of normative gender implicit in teaching’s professional norms. This expectation was enforced by the profession’s gatekeepers more than by K–12 students and their families, who participants generally described as hospitable or indifferent to having a nonbinary teacher. If the profession is to genuinely welcome gender diversity, it must recognize and work to deconstruct its own gender normativity.

Disrupting cisheteronormativity in STEM through humanism

“…STEM is historically rooted in cisheteropatriarchical practices (de Pillis and de Pillis, 2008;Hughes, 2017) and the ways in which this affects collegiate students with MIoSG is only starting to be understood (e.g., Linley et al, 2018;Iskander, 2021;Miller et al, 2021;Vaccaro et al, 2021). Using grounded theory methodology in conjunction with critical discourse analysis, we examined how STEM students with MIoSG experience cisheteronormative D/ discourses in their collegiate contexts and how systemic D/ discourses of power influence these experiences.…”

Editors’ Introduction: Toward Trans Studies in K–12 Education

“…Within the United States, higher education researchers have led the way in developing a nascent body of work focused on trans collegiate experiences (see Catalano, 2015; Duran, Blockett, & Nicolazzo, 2020; Garvey, Mobley, Summerville, & Moore, 2019; Jourian, 2017; Nicolazzo, 2017; Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018) and trans pedagogies in higher education (see Adair, 2015; Aguilar-Hernández & Cruz, 2020; Galarte, 2015; Malatino, 2015; Muñoz & Garrison, 2008; Platero & Drager, 2015; Wentling, 2015). Scholarship dedicated to trans knowledge and experiences is also developing in U.S.-based K–12 education research and addresses topics including trans pedagogies (Keenan, 2017, Miller, 2016), educators’ trans-supportive practices (Mangin, 2020a, 2020b), teachers’ experiences working with trans and/or gender-creative youth (Meyer, Tilland-Stafford, & Airton, 2016), queer and trans youth of color thriving in schools (Darling-Hammond, 2019), and the experiences of nonbinary student teachers (Iskander, 2021) (see also Gilbert & Sinclair-Palm, 2019; Kean, 2021; Keenan & Hot Mess, 2020; McQuillan, 2021; Stiegler, 2016; Suárez & Mangin, 2022). Continued growth of ethical, trans-informed education research has the potential for transforming harmful education structures and practices and may lead to more equitable educational spaces for all—especially trans students and educators.…”

Up Schitt’s Creek? Comedy as a Slantwise Pedagogical Encounter with Queerness

“…Drawing on SC as a pedagogical resource, the purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to discuss how SC achieves queer, utopian effects that disrupt simplistic or deficit narratives about queer lives; and (2) to offer prompts for exploring these effects with student teachers for encountering queerness in the teacher education classroom. Although engagements with queerness have begun to emerge as a theme in teacher education research (Airton & Koecher, 2019; Airton & Martin, 2022; Blair & Deckman, 2022; Brant, 2016; Erden, 2009; Gorski et al, 2013; Iskander, 2021; Kearns et al, 2017; McEntarfer, 2016; Rands, 2009), queer issues, experiences, and priorities nonetheless remain a challenge for some teacher educators to navigate pedagogically in their classrooms. In her paper on preparing student teachers to become queer allies in their practice, Clark (2010) identifies multiple factors contributing to this being a challenge for some teacher educators, including student teachers’ anxieties around the expectations of school management and parents, as well as teacher educators’ own lack of knowledge on queerness.…”