Shared Vulnerability, Collaborative Composition, and the Interrogation and Reification of Oppressive Values in a High School LGBTQ-Themed Literature Course

Abstract

With recent decades showing an increase in educational literacy scholarship attending to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) people and texts with LGBTQ themes, we sought to extend this scholarship through examining collaborative composition for public audiences beyond a classroom and school. We explored these composing practices through our ethnographically informed qualitative study of a semester-long LGBTQ-themed literature course for high school juniors and seniors, which we cotaught and coresearched. Ultimately, we found, through collaborative composing for public audiences, students and teachers in the LGBTQthemed literature course had opportunities for interrogating oppressive values. When students and teachers shared vulnerability in that they shared responsibility for oppressive values, they embraced these opportunities. However, when students and teachers failed to share vulnerability but, instead, imposed it on a single individual, they squandered these opportunities. These findings underscore the importance of sharing vulnerability when working to interrogate oppressive values through collaborative composition for public audiences.

Improvisational Teaching as Being With: Cultivating a Relational Presence Toward Justice‐Oriented Literacies

“…In keeping with research suggesting the importance of teacher-student relationships, intuition, and vulnerability as contexts for justice-oriented literacies (e.g., Blackburn & Schey, 2018;Jones & Spector, 2017), this analysis similarly highlights the importance of a relational presence in the classroom. Improvisational teaching and being with the major resources seeping into the classroom are critical for classroom conditions of possibilities that value students' literacy lives and nurtures justice-oriented sensibilities.…”

“…Recent research has noted how a relational presence in the classroom is needed to critically address the depth of embodied emotion and learning during literacy learning (Blackburn & Schey, 2018;Dutro, 2013;Jones & Spector, 2017). Attention to the relational and affective forces and flows of planning and teaching can reorient teachers and teaching toward an ethical interdependence with the contemporary, historical, political, moral, human, and ecological events unfolding in classroom life and the world as a part of literacy instruction and learning.…”

Disciplinary Literacy: From Infusion to Hybridity

“…These researchers addressed disciplinary expertise and students’ interests in various ways. Two studies were designed in collaboration with local school leaders (Blackburn & Schey, 2018; Chandler-Olcott, Doerr, Hinchman, & Masingila, 2016), the latter of which also involved collaboration of literacy and disciplinary researchers and teachers. Two additional studies also involved explicit collaborations of literacy and disciplinary scholars, along with classroom teachers, to represent disciplinary and school-based ways of knowing (Doerr & Temple, 2016; Shanahan, Shanahan, & Misischia, 2011).…”

“…Researchers were the disciplinary teachers in two studies, drawing on long-standing recommendations for teacher research to develop context-specific teaching ideas (Blackburn & Schey, 2018; Tanner, 2017). Two studies privileged students’ perspectives (Learned, 2018; Skerrett, 2018).…”

“…They valued teachers’ perspectives, compelling inquiry, authentic disciplinary texts, supportive practices, gradually withdrawn scaffolds, and expectations that students were capable of using available resources to construct new learning—varied, context-driven approaches drawing on generic and discipline-specific literacy practices. Students appeared to be engaged, motivated, and willing to learn during inquiry that welcomed their insights and critique (Blackburn & Schey, 2018; Learned, 2018; Skerrett, 2018).…”