ERIC Number: EJ1485950
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0159-6306
EISSN: EISSN-1469-3739
Available Date: 0000-00-00
'Everything They Think They Know, They Should Forget': How Trans School Workers Respond to Transphobic Discourses
Lee Iskander1; Harper Keenan2; Mollie McQuillan3; Mario Suarez4; Bishop Owis5; Christina Cook6; Daniel Gallardo
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v46 n4 p536-549 2025
This article explores how trans school employees redeploy, trouble, challenge, and refuse prevalent discourses about transness and education. Drawing from interviews with 100 school workers in Canada and the United States, we employ Coleman's (2023) concept of 'narrative repair' to consider participants' responses to an interview question asking what they would like the public to know about their workplace experiences. We show that workers in our study primarily drew from four overarching narratives about the relationship between their transness and their work in schools: 1) trans school workers face increased difficulty; 2) trans school workers have unique strengths; 3) trans school workers are no different from other school workers; and 4) the experiences of trans school workers defy narrativization. Our findings deepen understandings of how broader cultural discourses influence how teachers narrativize their professional experiences.
Descriptors: Transgender People, Resilience (Psychology), Barriers, Social Bias, Individual Characteristics, Experience, Preschool Education, Elementary Secondary Education, Foreign Countries, LGBTQ People, Teacher Characteristics, Teachers, Self Concept, Work Environment, School Personnel, Social Attitudes
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education; Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; 2Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA; 3School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA; 4Women and Gender Studies, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada; 5Educational and Counselling Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; 6Department of Educational Studies, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

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