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This study showcases classroom interactions that reveal the transformational potential of educational practices which disrupt traditional notions about teaching and learning. These disruptive practices create qualitatively different social relations within a classroom which open spaces for students to co-create knowledge in new and creative ways. Based on an ethnographic study, conducted in a foundational course for pre-service teachers, that explored the pedagogical practices of a teacher educator committed to a social justice-based critical pedagogy, analysis of classroom interactions revealed the following disruptive teaching practices: providing spaces for creative explorations, a focus on community building, and using secular mindfulness practices.

This paper offers insights into how the teaching of queer topics in English language arts classes can be reframed by bridging the goals, practices and conceptual tools of queer theory to literacy teaching. Drawing on an ethnographic classroom study, which explored a 13-week high school Gay and Lesbian Literature course, this paper discusses how teaching an English literature curriculum centred on the voices and stories of LGBTQI people constitutes a meaningful site for learning and teaching. In the process, I show how a queer-themed literature curriculum not only intervenes disruptively into the heteronormative space of school through its content but also through pedagogical practices that open up new lines of thinking for understanding diverse sexualities and genders. Through vignettes from the classroom, I illustrate how queer moments were enacted in this high school course as the class (a) deconstructed literary and media texts; (b) used moments of discomfort for learning; (c) produced counter-narratives through creative acts; and (d) engaged in experiential learning activities that troubled commonsense understandings of sexuality, sex and gender. The paper aims to provide educators and administrators with ideas on how a comprehensive queer-inclusive English literature curriculum can be implemented in high schools.

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a 13-week Gay and Lesbian Literature course, this paper explores how a high-school teacher and her students engaged with queer-themed literature. Focused on episodes around the class' engagement with two of the novels read in the course--Rita Mae Brown's "Rubyfruit Jungle" and Michael Cunningham's "The Hours"--the paper offers insights into how these queer counter-narratives opened up spaces for unanticipated queer moments which intervened disruptively into the heteronormative space of the English literature classroom, while also revealing the persistency of heteronormative discourses. This research raises questions about the pedagogical frameworks which guide the implementation of curricula focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer topics in secondary schools. I suggest that queer counter-narratives provide productive sites where teachers and their student readers can negotiate the paradoxes of contemporary queer subjectivities as they wrestle with notions of identity, normalcy, and norms related to diverse sexualities and genders.

This article offers insights on how students experienced and made sense of their learning in a trimester-long high school Gay and Lesbian Literature course. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews that the students completed as part of a larger ethnographic study of this class, the author shows how a queer-themed literature curriculum is relevant for both LGBTQ-identifying and straight-identifying students and contributes to a better school climate.