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This text refers to a Learning and Service practice developed in the Sound Design class of the Degree in Digital Creation, Animation and Videogames in collaboration with the University of A Coruña's Center for Gender and Feminist Studies-CEXEF. This practice was carried out within the framework of the project "Bibliodiversity. Libraries as agents for educating in gender and sexual diversity", whose aim was to promote the use of children's and young people's literature as a didactic tool in the classroom. From a selection of picture books, the students were confronted with the creation of a story entirely in sound in all its phases, from the script to post-production, using the creative and expressive potential of sound to bring the idea to a child audience. This reorientation of the practice "sound narration" led the students -future creators of animation and videogame contents- to develop a critical reflection on the necessary visibilization of gender and sexual diversity for a democratic society, in addition to the competences of the subject.

Based on an existing measure of homophobia, we developed an instrument to measure both transphobia and homophobia, as well as their relationship with other demographic variables that included attributed sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and political affinity. Research was designed to establish the relationship between homophobia and transphobia, by comparing the results of a validated Homophobia Test with a Transphobia Test that has been designed by adapting the same items; and to explore the relationship between homophobia/transphobia and other socio-demographic variables, specifically including gender, geographic origin, sexual orientation, political ideology, and religious conviction). Our research with 1,133 trainee and 182 practicing teachers demonstrated the reliability of our instrument, suggesting a correspondence between the two types of prejudice. Our results also found that these two prejudices followed similar trends with respect to other variables: respondents who identified as men showed higher levels of both homophobia and transphobia, as did those who professed religious conviction and were affiliated with the right wing of the political spectrum. We found that people who identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual were less homophobic and transphobic that those who identified as heterosexual. Based on these data, we hypothesize that the two types of prejudice explored here derive from a common factor, the broader social construct of cisgenderism, so that any deviation from the heterosexual matrix, whether in terms of gender identity, gender presentation, or sexual orientation, results in social stigma. The professionals included in our sample are entrusted with well-being of all children, and are responsible for teaching about human diversity as part of the curriculum. Our findings will help us understand how teachers might respond to children who transgress, or are perceived to transgress, cisgendered norms, and to design more effective teacher training concerning sex and gender diversity.

Editorial número 10.

In this article we analyze the situation of immigrant organizations during the European economic crisis. We set out to examine how, during a period of heightened economic insecurity, priorities among these multiples roles might shift when members find themselves in a particularly vulnerable situation. Data was collected in the form of 16 extended semi-structured interviews with group representatives throughout the Galician autonomous community in north-western Spain. Our data provide an empirically-based study that have led us to adapt Schrover and Vermeulen’s (2005) classification of immigrant association approaches as either defensive (responding to social exclusion) or offensive (emphasizing differences with respect to the destination society), extending this scheme to include a third approach, which our data show to be a priority even under conditions of economic insecurity: claims for intercultural relations with receiving society members with the goal of increased social cohesion and mutual understanding.

As two cis-hetero woman feminist educators, we provide an educator’s perspective on trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourses. We begin by discussing the heterosexual matrix and the gender violence that it produces in schools as well as other socializing institutions. The socially constructed sexual binary constrains identity production to adhere to the heteronormative, at the same time excluding those who transgress this normativity. We continue by reviewing how schools are particularly significant spaces for these early social interactions, but the social discourses enacted in educational contexts mirror those of broader society. We then critically analyse some of the increasingly belligerent popular discourses promoted by TERF groups since the 1970s, appropriating feminist discourses to produce arguments that contradict basic premises of feminism. We trace possibilities for a collaborative response by reinforcing alliances between transfeminism and other feminist movements. Finally, as teacher-educators, we highlight among these a critical (queer) pedagogy that incorporates trans* experience as part of a broader feminist educational agenda: to contribute to the creation of a more equitable society based on critical reflections on the gender normative. Such a pedagogy not only rejects trans-exclusionary discourses that serve to reinforce hierarchies and promote violence, but embraces trans* experience as a productive educational resource for understanding human diversity. Human experience that challenges the sexual binary can help educators to critically question the heteronormative and to broaden our understandings; in the words of Eric Rofes, drawing upon ‘status queer’ to ‘rethink our efforts and our role in either maintaining or radically transforming the status quo’.

[Abstract] This article explores transnational motherhood from the perspective of Nicaraguan migrant workers in Spain and Nicaraguan family members caring for migrant women's children. Our sample included families with children who have special needs, to explore how economically disadvantaged families draw upon migration as a strategy to address educational and physical needs not provided by a weak ‘exclusionary’ social policy regime. Applying the notion of the family display to migrant mothers and their families, our research reveals how gendered expectations of parenting shape their experience and the ways in which they explain and justify the migratory project. Migrants and family members, with certain reservations and limitations, actively reinvent motherhood by (re)constructing financial contribution as a type of caring. Our research also unsettles the classic notion of the ‘other mother’, as respondents describe caring as distributed over extended kin networks The project entitled ‘Childhood diversity, society, and maternal emigration in Nicaragua’, or DISEMINAR, was funded by the Xunta de Galicia (PR815A/2017/7) as part of the Spanish Autonomous Community of Galicia’s programme for supporting university-led development cooperation projects. The principal investigator was Verónica Robles of the Department of Physiotherapy, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (UDC) Xunta de Galicia; PR815A/2017/7

In Cabo Verde, Portuguese is the official language, while Kriolu is the first language of virtually all the population. The schooling context clearly reflects this diglossic situation: while the vast majority of children speak Kriolu at home, Portuguese continues to be the exclusive language of instruction. Thus, Portuguese in Cabo Verde represents a post-colonial language that has maintained its de jure status but has not entered de facto domains of use. The research described in this article is based on discourse analysis of legislative and policy documents and extended semi-structured interviews with politicians, educators and language activists. Our results in this former colonial context invite us to reconsider traditional understandings of pluricentricity, as they suggest that Cabo Verdean Portuguese is not (yet) associated with local identity and has not (yet) been accepted by its speakers as a legitimate, standardised variety.

In Spain, there are few educational materials that challenge heteronormativity through educational practice. At the early childhood education level, these materials are especially scarce, with the notable exception of a book aimed at practitioners offering a planned unit on family diversity (Sanchez Sainz, 2010). Spanish teacher education programmes have done little to prepare teachers for this challenge (Escolano Lopez and Gallardo Linares 2009).

Queer pedagogy can be considered a kind of critical pedagogy, which questions the neutrality of knowledge and renders teaching a political act. Drawing upon queer studies, it remains strategically poised on a series of important contradictions between constructing and deconstructing, defining and undoing. In the very impossibility of resolving such issues it challenges the basic premise of the institution of schooling—instead of providing clear and definitive answers to questions, it keeps them open. Its productivity lies in unsettling oppressive certainties. Can we both understand that bodies, by their very nature, exceed their discursive construction, and at the same time recognize people’s own identifications and the very real social and historical repressions they have experienced and continue to experience as a result of these? Discourse analysis in the field of education provides the potential for questioning the limits of discourse and the knowledge it creates, while creating spaces for recognition and the production of alternative understandings. Instead of simply replacing older knowledge regimes with newer (and supposedly better) ones—a traditional didactic approach—we might critically analyze how knowledge has been constructed and how people’s lived experiences challenge these constructions, and then begin to imagine a queer pedagogy based on this analysis.

In the second half of the 19th century, two Spanish primary school teachers were married despite the fact that their legal status as women rendered this union not only illegal but also publicly scandalous. In 2008 their story was resurrected in the form of a book based on an extensive review of educational, legal, and media archives. The Spanish press responded to the book’s publication by embedding the events within a more recent historical narrative around the struggle for gay marriage rights. In this article, we analyze the events in light of the understandings of sex, gender and sexuality that were available at the time, and then explore both the continuities and discontinuities with the modern interpretive framework that affords these women a lesbian identity, drawing upon Bennett’s notion of ‘‘lesbian-like’’ practices in eras where such identities were not yet conceptualized.

During the repressive Franco regime (1939–1975), much of Spain’s early sexual rights movement took place behind closed doors. Now Spain ranks 12th out of all 49 European countries on a scale based on laws and policies that directly impact on LGBTI people’s human rights. However, Spanish schooling still lacks an explicit policy framework for teaching gender and sexual diversity. Activist organizations have begun to develop resources and materials in the hope of filling important gaps in teacher training and institutional support. This chapter explores several lines of activism related to gender and sexual diversity, along with the impact they have had, and continue to have, in school contexts. These social movements have followed two main lines—the promotion of equality and visibility for (primarily gay and lesbian) persons, and a more radical trend based on transfeminist thinking that resists the notion of normal, extending a feminist critique of the patriarchy.

In this article, we aim to explore the important role of future teachers in the revitalisation of minoritised languages. In the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia, language legislation stipula...

La llegada de inmigración extranjera a Galicia sin lazos con la emigración gallega y por causas económicas a comienzos del siglo xxi provocó el asentamiento de comunidades migrantes de forma estable. Uno de los indicadores de asentamiento de la inmigración extranjera y de integración en la sociedad de acogida es la creación de asociaciones étnicas. En la investigación en la que se basa este artículo nos centramos en el estudio del asociacionismo de los inmigrantes extranjeros no hispanoparlantes en Galicia para analizar sus demandas y sus estrategias en relación con sus procesos de integración. La realidad del tejido asociativo inmigrante en Galicia está marcada por la situación de precariedad, la vivida por sus líderes y asociados a raíz de la crisis económica y la sufrida como entidades por las políticas de austeridad marcadas por el recorte del gasto social. En este artículo complementaremos la clasificación sobre el tejido asociativo étnico de Schrover y Vermeulen (2005), la cual distingue entre asociaciones defensivas -las que responden a la exclusión- y ofensivas -las que recalcan sus diferencias con respecto a la sociedad receptora-, con un tercer tipo: las organizaciones con demandas interculturales que buscan una mayor interacción y un mayor intercambio con la sociedad de acogida. Since the beginning of the 21st century with the arrival of external immigrants who were motivated by economic factors and lacked ties to prior Galician emigration, Galicia has witnessed the consolidation of migrant communities. The formation of ethnic associations is one of the indicators of foreign community settlement and integration in the receiving society. The research project on which this article is based focused on the associations formed by non-Spanish speaking external immigrants in Galicia in order to analyze their claims and strategies related to processes of integration. The realities faced by these Galician immigrant associations have been shaped by economic instability. The economic crisis has directly affected the lives of group leaders and members, and the organizations themselves have suffered as a result of austerity measures that have reduced social spending. In this article we apply Schrover and Vermeulen's (2005) classification of ethnic association approaches as either defensive (responding to social exclusion) or offensive (emphasizing differences with respect to the receiving society), and extend this scheme to include a third type: organizations which make claims for interculturality (stronger interactions and exchanges with the host society). L'arribada d'immigració estrangera a Galícia sense vincles amb l'emigració gallega i per causes econòmiques al començament del segle xxi va provocar l'assentament de comunitats migrants de forma estable. Un dels indicadors d'assentament de la immigració estrangera i d'integració en la societat d'acollida és la creació d'associacions ètniques. En la recerca en què es basa aquest article ens centrem en l'estudi de l'associacionisme dels immigrants estrangers no hispanoparlants a Galícia per analitzar les seves demandes i les seves estratègies en relació amb els seus processos d'integració. La realitat del teixit associatiu immigrant a Galícia està marcada per la situació de precarietat, la viscuda pels seus líders i associats arran de la crisi econòmica i la soferta com a entitats per les polítiques d'austeritat marcades per la retallada de la despesa social. En aquest article complementarem la classificació sobre el teixit associatiu ètnic de Schrover i Vermeulen (2005), la qual distingeix entre associacions defensives -les que responen a l'exclusió- i ofensives -les que recalquen les seves diferències pel que fa a la societat receptora-, amb un tercer tipus: les organitzacions amb demandes interculturals que busquen una major interacció i un major intercanvi amb la societat d'acollida.

This focused case study analyses the roots of super-diversity in a place where immigration is an emerging phenomenon, Northwestern Spain (Galicia). It is characterized by a mostly rural population, an aging demographic, and a historically depressed economy. Yet the region has recently experienced a significant increase in immigration - a reversal of the region’s historically pronounced trend of emigration. To understand immigration in its early stages, this book takes a historical approach that focuses on diversities that go beyond nationality. It explores local yet international phenomena such as different patterns of return migration, transnational community and familial relationships, and niche labour markets. The book takes a broad interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, sociolinguistics, literature, and education, to provide a detailed case study analysis. While the case is specific, many other geographic regions will share some of the factors the book explores. Understanding how these factors interact will provide a useful point of contrast for analysing them in a range of other international contexts.

In the Northwestern region of Spain, Galician is recognized as a co-official language, alongside Spanish. The Galician Linguistic Normalization Law (Xunta de Galicia, Lei 3/1983, do 15 Xuno, de Normalizacion Linguistica, 1983) was designed to reverse a process of linguistic substitution in favor of Spanish that has threatened Galician, along with other minoritized languages in Spain, for generations. Nevertheless, the revitalization goal of Galician language legislation has not been adequately supported by school policy. In this chapter we first report the results of a survey of 3rd and 4th-year ECE majors at a Galician university (approximately 200 students), focusing on their self-perceptions of Galician competence and expectations for using the Galician language as an instructional medium in their future teaching. Then we will analyze examples of ECE Centers that are committed to using and promoting the Galician language, taking into account the particular challenges involved in promoting bilingualism in minoritized language contexts. These go beyond simple linguistic competencies to involve metalinguistic goals such as raising the social status of the language, reducing stereotypes, and creating new positive associations. We will analyze a variety of initiatives aimed at promoting and supporting the use of Galician in ECE contexts, including examples from a range of specific school settings (public and private, urban, peri-urban, and rural, etc.). In a minoritized language context where intergenerational transmission of Galician continues to diminish, these initiatives attempt to revitalize the language among the youngest generation though a range of practices, from the partial introduction of Galician as a medium of instruction to the incorporation of literature, performing arts, and other engaging activities that aim to present the minoritized language as both a modern living language and a common cultural heritage. Despite the disheartening trends concerning language competence and use, the work of these educators and other professionals demonstrate the transformative potential of effective school-based language planning, even in relatively unsupportive policy contexts.

O Proxecto de Investigación “Explorando as posibilidades de estender a dimensión global da educación para o desenvolvemento na ESO. Unha investigación diagnóstica en centros educativos” é unha proposta de investigación colaborativa entre o Grupo de Investigación Política Educativa, Historia e Sociedade da Universidade da Coruña e Solidariedade Internacional de Galicia, financiado pola Xunta de Galicia (PR804A 2014/07). O obxectivo é identificar as necesidades do profesorado e do centro educativo que colabora nos proxectos de Educación para o Desenvolvemento (EpD) de ONGDs para que estas accións sexan máis significativas para o alumnado. Tomamos como referencia a experiencia do Reino Unido. Trátase dunha investigación cualitativa para o quese aplicaron distintas estratexias de recollida de datos arredor de tres obxectivos: (i) saber como integraron no Reino Unido a dimensión global no curriculum e cales son as súas porpostas didácticas, (ii) coñecer outras experiencias , e (iii) desvelar cales son os intereses e necesidades do profesorado galego para integrar a dimensión global. Para abordar estos obxectivos utilizáronse técnicas que permitisen comprender as experiencias sociais nos escenarios naturais desde a perspectiva dos protagonistas, en concreto: 1. Análise de documentos para caracterizar a dimensión global no curriculo e nas propostas didácticas do Reino Unido, estructurando en unidades de significado as distintas fontes documentais a través de categorías. 2. Microestudos de caso en 6 centros educativos para coñecer os intereses e necesidades do profesorado individualmente e do centro no seu conxunto, mediante entrevistas –de corte narrativo e semiestructuradas– a tres tipos de informantes (membros do equipo directivo, responsables das bibliotecas e profesorado que xa desenvolve actividades de EpD nas aulas). 3. Os grupos focais para contrastar as distintas realidades dos centros educativos e contrastar posicionamentos de forma simultánea. 4. Entrevistas semiestructuradas a persoas expertas en Educación Global e 5. Elaboración de forma colaborativa dunha plataforma. Como estratexia xeral de análise aplicouse a codificación temática. A meta do estudo é proporcionar descripcións e interpretacións, e non xeralizacións, que permitan a outros docentes aplicar algunhas das conclusións e recomendacións a súa experiencia nas aulas. Con esta finalidade creouse unha plataforma dixital para facilitar o acceso a bibliografía, compartir experieincias e fomentar o intercambio.

Using in-depth interviews, we asked sexuality educators in South Africa about their own professional preparation and what they believed were necessary educator characteristics for teaching Sexuality Education. Our findings show that our teachers taught Sexuality Education without any appropriate qualification or preparation, but because they had a lighter teaching load and had room to take on more teaching hours. Nevertheless, they all mention that 'not anybody can teach Sexuality Education'. Drawing on Shulman's taxonomy of knowledge and Freire's concept of critical consciousness, we attempt to make meaning of the teachers' responses and their relevance for the teaching of Sexuality Education.

The genesis of this Special Edition of Irish Educational Studies ‘Queer Teaching – Teaching Queer’ lies in a symposium held at the 2014 ECER Conference in Porto, Portugal. Entitled ‘Negotiating Heteronormative School Contexts’ – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Issues in Education’, the symposium drew upon innovative scholarship from Ireland, Spain, Germany and Sweden. Subsequent informal discussions between the Chair of that symposium, Declan Fahie, and the Discussant, Renée De Palma Ungaro, tentatively broached the idea of a book or special edition of a journal which could explore these themes further. An obvious collaborator in the form of Aideen Quilty from UCD helped bring this idea to fruition with the immediate and enthusiastic support from the Editorial Board of Irish Educational Studies.

In this article, we examine the experiences of 18 Galician language learners who participated in what Garland [(2008). The minority language and the cosmopolitan speaker: Ideologies of Irish language learners (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara] refers to as a ‘language-learning holiday’ in Galicia in north-western Spain. We examine what motivates these learners to travel abroad to study Galician and in some cases to become new speakers of this minoritised language. We explore the ideologies and practices of these students, who as edutourists [Yarymowich, (2005). ‘Language tourism’ in Canada. A mixed discourse. In F. Baider, M. Burger, & D. Goutsos (Eds.), La Communication touristique. Approches discursives de l’identité et de l’alterité (pp. 257-273). Paris: L’Harmattan], are the targets and potential consumers of cultural and linguistic commodification. We explore the ways in which students themselves commodify Galician culture and language, in their attempts to capture what they perceive as an authentic learning experience and as a means of accessing a minoritised linguistic and cultural group.

From 2006 to 2008 UK-based primary school teachers in the No Outsiders project explored possibilities for addressing sexualities equality in their classrooms. What all teachers had in common was a resource pack that included 27 children's books exploring themes of gender and sexuality diversity either directly or indirectly (i.e. by the presence of same-sex parents or gender non-normative characters). While such books have the potential to productively trouble the heteronormative spaces of schools by the mere presence of characters who do not conform to sex/gender/sexuality expectations, some of them have also been criticized for reproducing heteronormative family structures and implicit values and failing to go beyond ‘vanilla strategies’ that feel safe in primary school settings. The experiences and reflections of the No Outsiders project members can help educators plan not only which kinds of literature to use but also how to incorporate such texts into the curriculum.

This study investigates the self-reported experiences of students participating in a Galician language and culture course. Galician, a language historically spoken in northwestern Spain, has been losing ground with respect to Spanish, particularly in urban areas and among the younger generations. The research specifically focuses on informal linguistic interactions available beyond the classroom that are usually a defining characteristic of language study abroad programs. Student interviews and surveys reveal the kinds of difficulties faced by students, but they also point to ways in which programs in minoritized languages might to some extent compensate for the general lack of immersion provided by the social context. For students of marginalized languages such as Galician, linguistic immersion will never be as easy as it is for majority languages. Program designers and learners will need to pay more attention to the role of student agency in the creation of contexts for micro-immersion as part of the la...

The social integration of migrant populations has been defined as an intercultural, mutually enriching process, and can be distinguished from processes of assimilation that involve a more unilateral adaptation on the part of immigrants to the norms of the host country. In Spain, this distinction has become blurred in both political and educational policy discourses. In this article the authors analyse an incident that occurred in 2011 in which an 11-year-old girl was expelled from her school for wearing a hijab, one of two such cases in Spain and the first of its kind in the autonomous community of Galicia. The initial argument as expressed in the school policy reveals an essentialist and assimilationist understanding of culture in terms of the norms of the host society: students were expected to ‘keep their heads exposed’ in class as a ‘sign of respect’. Based on press reports, policy documents and legal proceedings, the authors interrogate the discourses deployed by the school and the local educational administration officials, politicians, Muslim community representatives and the family directly involved in the case, focusing on the ways in which they reveal an overall assimilationist vision of Spanish—Muslim intercultural community relations at the level of school policy.

The stakes are high for sex education in South Africa: it has been estimated that 8.7% of young people live with HIV. Within primarily US and UK contexts, there has been much debate over the relative merits of abstinence-only and comprehensive sexual education programmes. These perspectives have largely been presented as irreconcilable, but in-depth interviews with 25 life orientation teachers across the Free State Province of South Africa reveal that teachers may attempt to reconcile aspects of the two into a hybridised perspective. They promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people while recognising the value of some of the broader issues of comprehensive sexuality such as relationships and safe sex. We attempt to make meaning of this hybridisation and present two arguments: that the specific South African context challenges the idea that these two contradictory positions cannot be mixed and that they might be strategically combined to promote a comprehensive sexuality education tha...

Despite recent worldwide legal advances in the protection of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights, legal systems continue to take the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ to be based on a fixed and permanent natural order. Taking the current Spanish law regulating changes in gender identity as an example, we analyze how this recent (2007) legal advance still imposes medical criteria that pathologize the trans person and reinforce sexist assumptions. Although it is no longer up to a judge to determine a person's legal gender, the criteria for modification of official documents still implicitly support inaccurate and oppressive understandings of sex/gender/sexuality by, for example, relying on diagnostic criteria that support the imposition of gendered stereotypes on children and traditional social roles on adolescents and adults. Only through reconceptualizing our very notion of sex and gender can the law be revised to protect the rights of everyone no matter what their lived sex/gender histo...

Despite feminist understandings of the socially constructed nature of sex and gender and anthropological studies of alternative constructions, western societies tend to understand sex and gender in terms of mutually-exclusive hierarchical categories. We analyze the process by which a heteronormative sex-gender-sexuality system is constructed and legitimized to the exclusion of those whose physiology and/or behaviors do not conform to it. We provide some insights into ways in which the extraordinary diversity of sex-gender can be recognized and valued on various social planes, through activism, the production and critique of popular culture, and education.

Teachers who attended unitary rural schools in northwestern Spain were asked to relate their early school experiences in the form of a personal reflective and analytical narrative. Our analysis of these narratives revealed some strikingly difficult conditions; nevertheless, students tended to relate these hardships with a strong sense of nostalgia, focussing on the sense of community that they experienced. These results shed some light on the relevance of personal relations and the broader social and physical environment to the school ethos, and provides practice and design implications for urban as well as rural schooling contexts.

The authors base this article on findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Galiza (northwest Spain), in the province of A Coruña: an action research project in an early childhood education classroom; and a composite of ethnographic enquiries focusing on secondary education and vocational training programmes. Both studies sought to contribute to a fundamental transformation of schooling toward a more just, integrative and democratic intercultural institution. This effort includes denouncing the processes of social exclusion operating in those contexts, which are closely related to (neo)colonial and neoliberal practices.

The phenomenon of bullying has received a great deal of international attention in the last few decades. In this article, we provide a critical review of some of the major contributions from the field of educational research. We first provide an overall description of the classic concept of bullying, including certain characteristics of bullies and victims that have received particular attention, and then describe what we consider to be the principal limitations of these predominant academic and professional discourses. These include the following three concerns: (1) the restrictive definition employed, (2) a pathologizing bully–victim dichotomy, and (3) a gender-blind or at best gender-essentialist approach to gender difference. Finally, we propose a conceptual shift toward a more comprehensive understanding that is based, in part, on constructivist and poststructuralist perspectives on gender.

This article provides a vision of school disciplinary strategies as provided by childhood school memories of practicing or unemployed teachers. This narrative approach allows us to understand the school and its daily routines and rituals from an insiders' point of view, drawing upon the double perspective teachers employ when reflecting on their own experience as school children. The results of the study demonstrate a wide range of disciplinary practices coinciding with a Foucauldian disciplinary structure – a system of micro‐penalty governing time, activity, behavior, speech, the body, and sexuality. Analyzing the systemic regulation of bodies in schools can uncover institutional meanings and make them available for questioning, perhaps even negotiation. Recognizing the ways in which teachers' roles are inextricably bound with the disciplinary power relations of their institutions can help alleviate frustration and burnout and help teachers make more informed pedagogical decisions.

Concern for school-based homophobia is increasing, yet there is a tendency to focus on individual incidents of homophobic bullying rather than the cultural and institutional factors supporting them. We analyse ways in which institutional heteronormativity operates in primary schools and report results from our research in UK schools that culminated in a Participatory Action Research project in which practicing teachers explored possibilities for disrupting dominant discourses of sexuality and gender expression. We argue that policy and practice need to be reconceptualised to recognise institutional heteronormativity and to interrogate the discourses underpinning systematic forms of oppression.