Heteronormativity - Workplace Discrimination in Australian Schools : Gay and Lesbian Teachers in Australia

ISBN-13: 9783639140897 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 428 str.

Tarquam McKenna

Opis

This book provides stories of how Lesbian and Gayteachers in Australia employed adaptive rituals ofconformity and nonconformity within their schools.This study set in Western Australia, depended onthese teachers telling their own story aroundhomophobic distancing and their repression. Throughprivate interviews and collaboration with theco-participants the book sets out to makes sense ofthe ''performances'' lesbian and gay teachers chose toenact in the educational culture in Western Australiaaround the time of Gay Law Reform in 2002. Thestories of their everyday experience of as teacherspresent layers of gestured meanings, symbolicprocesses, cultural codes and contested sexuality andgender ideologies. This book also demonstrates thatthere are real social practices in schools thatassist in the recognition and construction ofsexuality and gender identity. The very differentstories of Lesbian and Gay teachers reveal variousinterpretive strategies of how one can belonging in adominant homophobic culture. The book furthers ourunderstanding of the contemporary identity formationissues of a hitherto invisible and silenced group ofeducators.

O autorze

Dr Tarquam McKenna is an Associate Professor at Victoria
University in Melbourne. His work in interdisciplinary arts
education focuses mainly on equitable learning and teaching
opportunities. He is very interested in equity, identity and
inclusive education practices for disenfranchised Lesbian and Gay
teachers and their students in Australia.