Approaching “sensitive” topics: criticality and permissibility in research-led teaching about children, sexualities, and schooling

Abstract

This is a repository copy of Approaching "sensitive" topics: criticality and permissibility in research-led teaching about children, sexualities, and schooling.

Permissible progress: Sexual(ities that) progress in and beyond English primary schools

“…Yet, as many scholars argue, approaches informed by queer praxis, which move beyond liberal ideals of equalities and 'inclusion', are necessary to systematically disrupt and undo heteronormativity (DePalma and Atkinson, 2009b;Ellis, 2007;Hall, 2020a). As such, this paper argues for adjustments to families' curricula in English primary schools alongside seizing opportunities for queer educational praxis (also see Hall, 2020b). This would include queering normative (hetero)gender/sexuality in everyday institutional practice and curricula as well as incorporating discussions of same-sex intimacies beyond talk of Different Families.…”

“…This approach is couched within a broader understanding of the sexual politics of neoliberalism (Bell and Binnie, 2000;Duggan, 2003;Stychin, 2003) -'a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them' (Duggan, 2003: 50) -and what Duggan hails as homonormativity: 'acceptance of the most assimilated, gender-appropriate, politically mainstream ' (2003: 44). Foregrounding speakability and neoliberal sexual politics in the socio-political context of English primary schools, this paper complements another study (Hall, 2020b) by linking the active socio-political work these schools undertake with the state's mobilisation of schools as socio-political institutions in taking an outward looking perspective that 'thinks through education' (Thiem, 2009) to provide a critical analysis of Stonewall's Different Families approach.…”

“…In this context, not being 'offensive' and taking a more 'sensitive' and 'age-appropriate' approach can be taken as adopting what Nixon (2009) -building on Silverstein and Picano (1993) and Rofes (2000) -calls 'vanilla strategies': highly sanitised representations of safe and approved sexual practice and fantasy that are deemed acceptable in the teaching profession (see also Hall, 2020b). The acceptability of these strategies, which are both popular and plain, is premised on Western constructions of childhood (sexual) innocence and child development -discourses which are spatialised in English primary schools as 'cultural greenhouses' (Hall, 2015(Hall, , 2020aRenold, 2005).…”

Teaching geographies of sexualities: 20 years on

“…This yet demands a sensitive approach to showing specific, and possibly controversial, visual content to students in class. Hall (2020a) discusses the implications thereof, including the upfront review of the appropriateness of such content, and consideration of the possible need for content previews/forecasts, which are favoured over trigger/content warnings. Nonetheless, he calls pedagogical attention to the possible consequences of discussing, or showing, uncomfortable, or "controversial", content and how potential viewer discretion alerts may translate into student (non-) participation.…”

“…• Shifting academic and political (or: politicized) contexts of teaching sexual (in)equality and (in)justice (Skelton, 2020); • Lesbian and queer pedagogies of tackling the centring of heterosexual and masculine geographies within the "here" and "now" (Browne, 2020); • Engaging the possibilities of using Black sexualities to enable pedagogical transgressions against the increasing disciplinary presence of Black geographies (Eaves, 2020); • Pursuing inquiry-based learning on cultural relativism regarding gender-based, heteronormative violence and child abuse (i.e. female genital mutilation/cutting) (Evans, 2020); • Confronting and questioning norms around acceptability and permissibility in teaching children's geographies of sexualities (Hall, 2020a); and • Negotiating the critical pedagogical role that the visual (i.e. public art) may play in addressing geographies of sexualities and gender and destabilizing concomitant normativities and hegemonies (Zebracki, 2020a).…”