Supporting transgender students in schools: beyond an individualist approach to trans inclusion in the education system

Abstract

In this article, we provide theoretically informed empirical insights into administrative and pedagogical approaches to supporting transgender students in schools which rely on a fundamental rationality of individualisation and rights. We draw on trans epistemological frameworks and political theories that address the limits of liberal individualism to provide insights into how transgender inclusion and recognition are conceived and enacted in one particular school in Ontario. Our case study contributes to an emerging body of research that documents the viewpoints of educators in response to the increasing visibility of trans youth in schools and a growing awareness of their experiences which have highlighted the institutional and systemic barriers continuing to impact on the provision of support for transgender students in the education system. Overall, the case study serves as an illustrative exemplification of the problematic of trans inclusion when it is driven by a logics of liberal individualism and rights that fail to address broader forces of cisnormativity and cisgenderism.

Non-binary young people and schools: pedagogical insights from a small-scale interview study

“…This reflects the invisibility of trans and non-binary identities in most schools (Carlile and Paechter 2018). Because schools and colleges only appeared to develop strong policies and practices if they knew they had a trans or non-binary student (Martino, Kassen, and Omercajic 2020), a vicious circle developed that actively prevented young non-binary people from coming out. The lack of anticipatory action from schools and colleges meant that the underlying ethos of a school community might include tolerance of transphobia, with the result that young people were afraid to come out as non-binary, so were invisible to the institution.…”

“…However, while there is considerable research on those trans young people identifying across a gender binary, i.e. as male or female (Paechter 2020;Carlile 2020;Edwards-Leeper, Liebowitz, and Sangganjanavanich 2016;Ehrensaft 2012;Ehrensaft et al 2018;Manning et al 2015;Marguerite 2018;Martino, Kassen, and Omercajic 2020;McCann et al 2019;Meyer and Leonardi 2018;Neary 2018;Pleak 2009;Price Minter 2012;Pyne 2014;Zucker 2019), comparatively little is known about those children and young people who identify outside of this, as non-binary, agender, genderqueer or using other related terms 1 (Jones et al 2020), and even research reports that use such terms as 'gender creative' in their titles frequently focus only on young people identifying across a binary gender divide. Furthermore, we have found virtually no research about non-binary young people's experiences of schooling, though they are occasionally mentioned in publications about what happens to binary trans people in educational settings (Bradlow et al 2017;Evans and Rawlings 2019;Jones et al 2016;Rankin and Beemyn 2012).…”

“…This is even the case when trans identities are recognised in schools. While many teachers are able to understand and respond to a traditional trans narrative of being born in the wrong body (Mason-Schrock 1996;Paechter and Marguerite 2020;Prosser 1998;Martino, Kassen, and Omercajic 2020), non-binary identities, particularly if they feature fluidity in identity and/or presentation, may be less readable to adults in school. For example, Neary (2018) reports that pre-service teachers who were shown a video about non-binary gender had predominantly negative reactions to this video clip, with several suggesting that the blurring of the male/female, man/woman binary 'went too far' (443) Furthermore, while it may be relatively straightforward for a school to recognise the experienced gender of a binary trans student, fully accommodating a non-binary young person necessitates putting in place gender-neutral provision of such things as toilets and changing facilities, as well as altering binary categories in record systems (Kjaran 2019): this will be easier to do in some spaces than others.…”

A trans pedagogy of refusal: interrogating cisgenderism, the limits of antinormativity and trans necropolitics

“…As Malatino has argued, it is necessary to refuse exceptionalising trans people and 'calcifying their alterity' with the inimical effects of turning them into objects of a voyeuristic cis gaze while failing to turn the critical gaze on the very cisgender racialised privilege that produces such objectification and the broader disciplining effects of gendered bodies in the first place (2015,399). This critical practice necessarily entails a pedagogical commitment to what Stryker terms trans desubjugation where the 'insufficiently elaborated knowledges' of trans people which have been submerged, effaced 'disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naïve knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges' ( 7) can be mobilised in creating spaces in classrooms and in developing courses for educating about gender expansiveness more broadly that defy the logics of a liberal embrace of trans inclusion (Martino, Kassen, and Omercajic 2020).…”

Pedagogy and pleasure: trans and gender transgressive students in an LGBTQ-themed literature class

“…Luecke (2011) advises educators to learn about trans students and to walk the 'fine line' of listening to trans students and their families without putting undue pressure on them to solve the problems of the school, like serving as a mentor for school staff (153). Martino, Kassen, and Omercajic (2020) further assert that teachers need 'knowledge about cisgenderism and cisnormativity to inform . .…”