Source: Issues in Teacher Education, Fall 2010, p. 81-104.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
In this autobiographical feminist narrative research, the author considers her queer academic life from the perspective of an “out” lesbian teacher education and queer studies teacher.
This is the author's process of the search for queerness—in curriculum, pedagogy, teacher education classes.
The author lectures both in the College of Education and the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Kennesaw State University.
Based on the author's observations, student demographics in the first group are generally religious, conservative, Southern, and overwhelmingly straight. Students in the second group are generally religious, conservative, Southern, and (from their own self-identification) gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgendered.
The author realized that each of her two classes- the College of Education and the Gender and Women’s Studies Program- has a distinct curriculum and each curriculum is infused in its own distinct way with sexuality and gender.
Therefore, the author had been employing different curricular and pedagogical practices, and had perceived a difference in her engagement with students in each program.
Contextualized through the lens of place, this essay explores intersections and tensions among queer theory, teacher education, and identities/ identifications, which looks to the author like a particular way of looking at curriculum, pedagogy, and the self.