Abstract:
The workings of sex-gender-sexualities in classroom spaces continue to operate around privileged notions of what it is to be “normal” or “natural”. Many queer and feminist scholars have highlighted a prevailing heteronormativity in educational spaces, how concepts of normality are embedded in the spaces, places, and curricular content of schools, and how these concepts are often ignored or left unchallenged by students and teachers. While a growing body of research has exposed the processes by which heteronormativity is maintained and enforced in school life, few have explored what is means to interrogate heteronormativity through critical norm and queer pedagogies. Even fewer have framed inquiry in a way that actively engages ‘with’ pre-service teachers beyond the scope of university-based courses and into classroom spaces.The data for this paper is drawn from an ongoing Queer Participatory Action Research (PAR) project with 15 pre-service teachers (co-researchers) and one University Lecturer. PAR is based on the understanding that practice and systematic reflection form a powerful type of research. Therefore, inherent in any PAR project is an explicit focus placed on generating and co-constructing knowledge through action; knowledge that makes a practical difference to the lives of those involved. Typically this entails a cyclical process of research, reflection and action, which involves researchers and participants working collaboratively to examine a problematic situation and transform it for the better. The purpose of this project is to work towards interrogating aspects of heteronormativity in everyday teaching practices through a critical and collaborative engagement with critical norm and queer based pedagogies. Drawing on key moments from this research, this paper will discuss the precarious, unnerving and elusive nature of pre-service teachers attempts to engage with critical norm and queer pedagogies. It will also explore some of the possibilities of moving beyond binaries in classroom spaces and speak to more general debates within educational research centred on “what queer concepts can do, what they are allowed to do, and, on what people say or think they cannot do” (Rasmussen and Allen, 2014, p.433).