Sexual Identities in English Language Education

Classroom Conversations

Cynthia D. Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135591724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

What pedagogic challenges and opportunities arise as gay, lesbian, and queer themes and perspectives become an increasingly visible part of English language classes within a variety of language learning contexts and levels? What sorts of teaching practices are needed in order to productively explore the sociosexual aspects of language, identity, culture, and communication? How can English language teachers promote language learning through the development of teaching approaches that do not presume an exclusively heterosexual world?

Drawing on the experiences of over 100 language teachers and learners, and using a wide range of research and theory, especially queer education research, this innovative, cutting-edge book skillfully interweaves classroom voices and theoretical analysis to provide informed guidance and a practical framework of macrostrategies English language teachers (of any sexual identification) can use to engage with lesbian/gay themes in the classroom. In so doing, it illuminates broader questions about how to address social diversity, social inequity, and social inquiry in a classroom context.

PART I
Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Queering Language Education

Whether in advertising, film … the Internet, or the political discourses of human rights …, images of queer sexualities and cultures now circulate around the globe.

Cruz-Malavé & Manalansan, 2002a, p. 1

I’m here because I really think it’s really an important topic … Most of us haven’t thought out well enough how issues of sexual identity affect our teaching … and we ought to be working on it.

‘Clay’, a teacher-educator who took part in my study

By investigating issues of sexual identity in English language education, I seek to contribute to the broad project of keeping education socially relevant and up-to-date in these times of ‘postmodern globalization’ (see Canagarajah, 2006). Understanding classrooms to be “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and

grapple with each other” (Pratt, 1999, p. 584) has brought to the fore pedagogic questions about how to address important but potentially contentious issues of social identity and inequity and what exactly a teacher’s role, and goal, ought to be in such endeavors (see Pennycook, 2001).

The central question of this book is how language teaching practices are changing—and should be changing—given the worldwide proliferation of increasingly visible lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities and communities and the widespread circulation of discourses, images, and information pertaining to sexual diversity. This book presents an empirical investigation into teachers’ and students’ experiences of talking in class about sexual diversity and of negotiating their own (and others’) sexual identities in the classroom context. Participating in this research were over 40 English language teachers, most of them based in North America but some in Asia, Australasia, and Europe, as well as over 60 adult English language learners, from Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and Europe, who were living and studying in the United States.

The first half of the book draws on focus groups and teacher interviews in order to analyze the teachers’ perspectives on what sexual identities have to do with learning or teaching English and their reported classroom experiences. The emphasis is on identifying those teaching practices—and the theoretical frameworks that underpin them—that serve to open up rather than close down learning opportunities. The second half of the book draws on class observations and follow-up interviews with the participating teachers and students in order to take a close look at classroom interactions in which gay or lesbian themes arose. Here the emphasis is on how participants experienced these interactions and what their often divergent accounts imply for pedagogy.

This introductory chapter outlines the research approach and book structure and then situates the study theoretically. It shows that research on social identities in language education has usefully engaged with poststructuralist theories of identity and, similarly, that research on sexual identities within the broad field of education has usefully engaged with queer theory. It then traces a similar trajectory in relation to the (largely grassroots) body of work on sexual identities and language education, which emerged in the 1990s and is starting to become a new area of research informed by queer and poststructuralist theoretical frameworks.

Interweaving practice and theory throughout, this book makes a case for queer inquiry as a valuable tool in language study, and it maps out what this looks like, or could look like, in language classes.

About This Study

Since the early 1990s, there has been growing interest in sexual identities in language education, particularly within the field of English language teaching (ELT). Through conference presentations and newsletter articles, teachers have been sharing classroom experiences and offering advice on such things as framing sexual diversity as a class topic (Kappra, 1998/1999; Snelbecker & Meyer, 1996), teaching literature that includes gay or lesbian characters (Jones & Jack, 1994), responding to homophobia in the classroom and in teaching materials (Brems & Strauss, 1995; Neff, 1992), and incorporating lesbian, gay, and bisexual perspectives when discussing cultural practices associated with romance and marriage (Hanson, 1998). Some teachers have recounted their own experiences of, or dilemmas about, coming out as a lesbian to students (Destandau, Nelson, & Snelbecker, 1995; see also Mittler & Blumenthal, 1994). In addition, commercially produced teaching materials began to incorporate references to lesbian or gay characters or concerns (e.g., Clarke, Dobson, & Silberstein, 1996; Folse, 1996; Thewlis, 1997).

Taken together, these initiatives have created valuable opportunities within professional forums for discussing sexual identity issues, thereby paving the way for a nascent body of research (see Nelson, 2006). In this newly emerging literature, a handful of publications explore the practical and theoretical factors that teachers are taking into account as lesbian and gay discourses infuse their classes (Benesch, 1999; Curran, 2006; De Vincenti, Giovanangeli, & Ward, 2007; Nelson, 1999, 2004a; Ó’Móchain, 2006). Another main focus of recent research is participants’ own sexual identity negotiations in and out of class and how these shape their experiences of language learning and/or teaching (King, 2008; Nelson, 2004b, 2005; Simon-Maeda, 2004; see also Ellwood, 2006). Also of interest is how students are positioning themselves as they discuss topics such as gay rights and homosexuality (Nguyen & Kellogg, 2005) and as they grapple with ‘discourses of heteronormativity’ in educational institutions (Dalley & Campbell, 2006).

The empirical investigation presented in this book builds on and significantly extends this existing literature by asking the following questions:

• What initiatives are being taken to move beyond monosexual language pedagogies, and what teaching challenges and opportunities are arising as a result?
• How are language learners and teachers experiencing class discussions with lesbian or gay themes, and what are the implications for language teaching practices?
• How might poststructuralist identity theories (especially queer theory) be of practical use when engaging with gay/queer themes in language classes?

By addressing these questions, this book aims to provide rigorous empirical research and theory that can usefully inform collegial discussions—among language teachers, teacher-educators, researchers, materials developers, learning advisors, and interested others—about matters of sexual diversity within contemporary language classes. It may also interest educators working in other subject areas, perhaps especially those with a language or literacy focus, or with multilingual, international student cohorts.

Eliciting Teachers’ Experiences and Perspectives

To investigate the research questions outlined above, it seemed important to hear from a number of teachers about their experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, straight, or transgender themes in the classroom. Freeman (1996) argues that teachers’ narratives should be taken seriously because they convey “the vital substance of what teachers know and how they think” (p. 101). In this study, I sought to identify key issues of concern to teachers across diverse programs, educational institutions and, insofar as possible, geographic regions.

Through focus groups and interviews, all of which were audiotaped, I elicited the experiences and viewpoints of a total of 44 teachers. The focus groups were advertised as discussion sessions for those interested in ‘sexual identities in ESL,’ and attendance was voluntary. I facilitated one focus group at an international conference for language teachers held in the United States (which drew focus-group participants who were teaching in that country as well as in Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom) and another two focus groups at two campuses of a U.S. university. Attending the focus groups were teachers, student teachers, and teacher-educators, some of whom were also material writers or program administrators. I refer to them collectively as ‘teachers’ because each of them was actively involved in teaching (see Silverman, 1993).

In each focus group I put forward just one question:

What, if anything, do sexual identities (straight, gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans-gender, queer, etc.) have to do with teaching or learning English?

My minimal facilitation was mostly limited to questions of clarification or inviting those who had not spoken to speak; in other words, “the style of questioning and interaction … [was] minimally interventionist” (McLeod & Yates, 1997, p. 27). I wanted to find out what issues and questions were pertinent for teachers, rather than impose those of interest to me.

In addition, I conducted individual interviews with six teachers who had already participated in a focus group and with five teachers who had been unable to attend one.

Once I had transcribed the tapes and undergone the iterative processes of analyzing and coding the transcripts, I identified recurring themes, and these have determined the focus and structure of this book.

Introduction (Part I) and Teachers’ Perspectives (Part II)

After setting out the research design, Chapter 1 draws on a variety of studies and theories to sketch out a broadly interdisciplinary, poststructuralist/queer framework that informs the rest of the book. This general framework is introduced in this chapter because it emerged from, and is applied to, the analyses of classroom practices that feature in the subsequent chapters.

The Introduction to Part II provides more detailed information about the data collection and analysis processes pertaining to Chapters 2 to 5.

Chapter 2 explores teachers’ experiences of, concerns about, and strategies for teaching gay and lesbian students; in so doing, it considers understandings of sexual identities internationally.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of why and how lesbian/gay subject matter is incorporated into some language classes yet prohibited in others, and it explores the teaching opportunities and challenges that are associated with this subject matter.

Chapter 4 examines one aspect of engaging lesbian/gay themes that teachers in my study found especially challenging—responding to homophobic comments or innuendo. The chapter critically examines teachers’ experiences of homophobic talk in class, and their attempts to respond to, or preclude, such comments.

Another main challenge for teachers was negotiating their own sexual identities in the classroom, and this is the focus of Chapter 5. While some teachers worried that their knowledge of lesbian/gay subject matter was inadequate, others felt this subject matter was a bit ‘too close for comfort.’ The chapter also looks at the advantages and the disadvantages of coming out in the classroom as a teaching tool.

Observing Classes and Interviewing the Participants

The teachers’ accounts help to paint a broad picture of the issues important to teachers across diverse education contexts, but these accounts are necessarily limited because they cannot convey the specific details of teaching practices (see Gore, 1993; Lather, 1991) nor how these are accomplished discursively (Lee, 1996). Neither can teachers’ accounts convey their students’ experiences or perspectives.

Given the relative dearth of research on this topic, I wanted to gain an understanding of the nitty-gritty of gay-themed classroom interactions— including who said what to whom and also how the participants experienced these interactions (following Luhmann, 1998; Schegloff, 1997). To find out how the issues identified through the focus groups and teacher interviews were playing out in actual classrooms, I observed classes and interviewed the participating teachers and students.

Like Allwright and Bailey (1991), I was not as concerned with “what would be the best way to teach” as with “what actually happens—not just what happens to the plans we make, but what happens anyway, independently of our designs” (p. xvii). Therefore, I did not set up any form of experimental classroom research but simply observed ‘naturally occurring’ classes (Nunan, 1992), and I made no attempt to influence the teachers or learners in the direction of my research topic. Thus, my investigation was ‘naturalistic,’ or noninterventionist (Watson-Gegeo, 1988).

I contacted teachers whom I had met through professional forums, seeking volunteers to take part in my study who, for one reason or another, considered it likely—or at least not unlikely—that lesbian/gay themes might emerge during their class. I was able to make arrangements with three teachers to observe ESL classes at three educational institutions in two different cities in the United States: a speaking/listening class, an academic English class, and a grammar-based ESL class. I conducted numerous interviews with the three teachers, before, during, and after my 2-week observation period in each of the classes; I also interviewed 28 students, which amounted to nearly half of the students in the three classes. The interviews made it possible for me to find out what teachers and students considered significant or noteworthy about specific classroom interactions in which gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender themes had arisen.

Given the inevitably subjective nature of conducting research, I have taken what Clarke, Davis, Rhodes, and Baker (1998) call “a relentlessly empirical stance” (p. 597). I have tried to ensure that my approach to collecting, coding, and analyzing the data has been as consistent, systematic, and detail-oriented as possible—given the organic nature of naturalistic inquiry, the unpredictability of classroom research, and the necessary selectivity of data transcription and analysis.

I should also mention that, throughout the book, I have made a point of including participants’ voices, not merely paraphrased versions of them. In this I have been guided by the following questions: “How do we frame meaning possibilities rather than close them in working with empirical data? How do we create multi-voiced, multi-centred texts from such data?” (Lather, 1991, p. 113).

Inside Three Classrooms (Part III) and Conclusion (Part IV)

The Introduction to Part III elaborates on how the data presented in Chapters 6–8 were collected and analyzed.

Chapter 6 examines an intensive English class whose international students, all of whom were from Asia, decided to study a unit of work on ‘lesbian/gay culture.’ It explores issues to do with eliciting personal experiences of lesbian/gay people and framing gay/lesbian people as ‘other’ and as controversial.

Chapter 7 examines discussions of the gay community within a university-based academic English class comprising refugees and immigrants, mostly from Asia and Central America. Among the issues it explores are responding when students insinuate a classmate is gay and the technique of asking students to adopt a gay vantage point.

Chapter 8 analyzes a gay-themed grammar lesson in a community college ESL class comprising immigrants and refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It discusses engaging students whose levels of familiarity with gay/lesbian themes vary greatly and approaching these themes with a focus on intercultural inquiry.

The concluding Chapter 9 synthesizes the pedagogic implications drawn from the classroom experiences (and theoretical frameworks) discussed in the book. It outlines some key macrostrategies of a queer inquiry approach, which can help teachers of any sexual identification to incorporate lesbian/gay themes (whether these arise in planned or spontaneous ways), to pose queer questions, and to engage multisexual cohorts.

Interweaving Practice and Theory

This book is concerned with teaching practices, which is meant in a very broad sense to encompass pedagogies and curricula, classroom interactions and discourses, teaching approaches and learning experiences, and the participants’ perspectives and positionings, as well as the concepts, values, and politics underpinning and shaping all of these aspects. Pedagogy, as Lusted (1986) explains it,

draws attention to the process through which knowledge is produced. Pedagogy addresses the ‘how’ questions involved not only in the transmission or reproduction of knowledge but also in its production … How one teaches … becomes inseparable from what is being taught and, crucially, how one learns.

(pp. 2–3)

(I should mention that, throughout this book, any italics that appear in quotations are from the original sources unless noted otherwise.) As Gore (1993) puts it, “pedagogy implies both instructional practices and social visions” (p. 15). In this book, teaching practices are understood to be social practices (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991; Mercer, 1995) and sociopolitical practices (e.g., Bernstein, 1996; Bourdieu, 1991). By ‘teaching practices,’ then, I mean what and how one teaches, what and how one learns, how knowledge is not simply passed on but produced, how learners and teachers interact, and what social visions permeate all of these processes.

Though teaching practices are the main focus of the book, I take the view that there is no practice without theory (Belsey, 1980). As Stern (1983) explains it,

No language teacher—however strenuously he [sic] may deny his interest in theory—can teach a language without a theory of language teaching, even if it is only implicit in value judgments, decisions, and actions, or in the organizational pattern within which he operates.

(p. 27)

This means that “[t]he choice is always between one theory and another, even if the theories involved are never clearly spelled out” (Mercer, 1995, p. 65). This book attempts to spell out some of the key theoretical frameworks that seem to be underpinning particular teaching practices in order to identify useful ways of thinking about sexual identities as an aspect of classroom practice.

In this endeavor, theory is considered “a tool in social activity” (Lemke, 1995, p. 156). In this sense, theory is used not to find ‘truth’ but to understand the meanings people are making of their experiences. As Lemke (1995) puts it,

[C]laims about truth or reality are meanings made by people according to patterns that they have learned, and … trying to understand how and why people make the meanings they do is more useful than fighting over the truths of their claims.

(p. 156)

In this book, theory is used not only in analyzing teaching practices but also in rethinking them, since research can be simultaneously “a knowledge-gathering … [and] a problem-solving activity” (van Lier, 1988, p. 21).

Thus, my aim is to provide a deeper understanding of a range of current teaching practices with regard to sexual identities by presenting, critically analyzing, and theorizing these practices (all the while foregrounding participant voices)—and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Teachers’ Perspectives
• PART III Inside Three Classes
• PART IV Conclusion
• Appendix A: Teachers Quoted
• Appendix B: Transcribing Key
• Appendix C: Students Quoted or Mentioned
• References