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This paper examines accounts from lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers, in autobiographical writing and qualitative studies. It uses these accounts to trace productive similarities between discourses relating to pedagogy and to sexuality in English-speaking countries from the 1970s onwards. Alongside these similarities runs a fundamental tension, between the disempowerment of LGB individuals and the traditional authority of the teacher. LGB teachers' accounts, negotiating this tension, move as a result in opposed directions. While many accounts explore knowledge, authority and speech, they disagree as to their meaning and the implications or their teaching practice. This disagreement becomes particularly sharp in three areas: coming out in the classroom, claiming authority as a teacher (and as a lesbian, gay or bisexual individual), and handling homophobic and biphobic statements from students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools are quasi-public/private organisations and being a teacher involves negotiating personal and professional boundaries. These boundaries have posed particular challenges for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBT-Q) teachers whose everyday lives are complicated by legislative, religious and cultural constraints, moral panics about childhood innocence, reductive discourses about sexuality and negative stereotypes. In many contexts, the past decade has seen rapid change in the politics of sexuality as legal structures for same-sex relationships have emerged and promised normalisation for LGBT-Q people. Such developments raise questions about how these changing politics of sexuality are spilling over into school contexts. In Ireland, entering into a civil partnership (CP) altered the shape of LGB teachers’ relations with their colleagues in schools. But neoliberal systems of performance and accountability coalesce with a persisting uncomfortable relationship between LGBT-Q identification and schooling ensuring that LGBT-Q teachers have different kinds of relations with parents and students. This paper provides new insight into these relations as LGB teachers entered into a CP. I argue that their work to manage these relations had ambivalent effects. Fore-fronting a high-performing professional subjectivity and maintaining distances with students while acting as agents of change (re)produced heteronormativity but simultaneously enabled moments that promised queer, transgressive potential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Owing to a variety of complex historical and socio-cultural factors, the Irish education system remains heavily influenced by denominational mores and values [Ferriter, D. 2012.Occasions of Sin: Sex & Society in Modern Ireland. London: Profile Books], particularly those of the Roman Catholic Church [O’Toole, B. 2015. “1831–2014: An Opportunity to Get it Right This Time? Some Thoughts on the Current Debate on Patronage and Religious Education in Irish Primary in Primary Schools: Reflections from the Republic of Ireland.”Irish Educational Studies34 (1): 89–102. doi:10.1080/03323315.2015.1010704; Faas, D., M. Darmody, and B. Sokolowska. 2016. “Religious Diversity in Primary Schools: Reflections from the Republic of Ireland.”British Journal of Religious Education38 (1): 83–98]. Unsurprisingly, with the declaration by the Church that homosexuality was ‘intrinsically disordered’ [Libreria Edittrice Vaticana. 2003. “Roman Catholic Catechism.” Accessed January 18 2013.http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm], the professional identity and practice of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) teachers working in denominational schools is often (in)formed by fear, as well as perceived, or actual, harassment and discrimination [Gowran, S. 2004. “The Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Teachers in Irish Schools.” InPrimary Voices, edited by J. Deegan, D. Devine, and A. Lodge, 37–56. Dublin: IPA; Fahie, D. 2016. “‘Spectacularly Exposed and Vulnerable’ – How Irish Equality Legislation Subverted the Personal and Professional Security of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Teachers.”Sexualities]. This paper examines the lived-experience of 23 self-identified LGB teachers who work(ed) in Irish Roman Catholic primary schools. Their unique experiences and perspectives of faith-based schooling are examined against a backdrop of the complex processes of rationalisation and reflexivity these teachers undertake as they endeavour to reconcile their sense of personal integrity – as members of the LGB community – with their professional responsibilities. The study draws particular attention to those LGB teachers who hold deeply felt, and sincere, beliefs in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church but who, nonetheless, express a level of discomfort at the language and tone of church dogma in respect of minority sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although all teachers are expected to be “role models,” discursive trajectories reaching back to the West's gay liberation pressure queer teachers to be role models in specific ways - by “coming out” and helping queer students out of their “time of difficulty.” Paradoxically, discourses that construct children as innocent and queers-as-a-threat make it difficult for queer teachers not only to take up these positions as role models but to be visible in schools. In this article, I explore the discourses that shape queer teachers' understanding of touch, sexuality, confidentiality, the private versus public domain, and pedagogical responsibility within the schooling context. Informed by Foucault, I analyze the interview data of three Ontario queer teachers to investigate the ways in which queers-as-a-threat and teacher-as-role-model influence the negotiation of their ethical dilemmas regarding their student crushes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the emphasis over the last decade on coming out as a pedagogical tool, I use my personal experience in the classroom to problematize this approach. I articulate the specific experience of the bisexual teacher in the classroom, which is a different and undertheorized experience than that of heterosexual or gay and lesbian teachers. I offer “bisexual pedagogy” as a pedagogy that (1) encourages students and instructors to theorize their full, bodily presence in the academic classroom; (2) borrows Gloria Anzaldua's concept of the mestiza to complicate not just personal identity labels, but all categories of difference, thus incorporating the multicultural nature of bisexual identity into a multicultural, interdisciplinary approach to the classroom; and (3) takes as a given the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and pedagogical approach. In this sense, bisexual pedagogy is a pedagogy that is particularly sensitive to the realities of “blended identity categories” of race, sexuality, gender, religion, and so on, but one that is not exclusively the realm of out bisexuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers in rural schools negotiate their sexual identities within the workplace. Although there has been progress towards LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) inclusion for teachers in urban and suburban schools, this article shows that their rural counterparts often experience their school communities differently. A questionnaire gathered data from school teachers in the United Kingdom identifying as LGBT. Whilst a small number of transgender, gender queer and non-binary teachers completed the questionnaire, it is important to note that these teachers taught only in urban environments. In rural schools, respondents identified only as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB). Therefore, LGB is used when referring to the rural respondents in this study and LGBT is used when referring generally to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The experiences of teachers working in rural schools were compared with those working in urban or suburban school settings. Results showed that LGB teachers in rural communities lack the opportunity to speak their identity into existence at school, and often find their personal and professional identities incompatible, leading to low self-worth, depression and anxiety. The article shows that in rural school communities, traditional and conservative rural norms and values are compelling and are often protected at the expense of creating safe and inclusive workplaces for LGB teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]