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Teacher education must prepare teacher candidates for diverse contexts and diverse learners. Such preparation involves teacher candidates unearthing their assumptions about diverse populations and understanding the roles candidates' own backgrounds play in these assumptions. Queer theory can facilitate this process through attention to culturally constructed notions of “normal” and “deviant.” This chapter investigates a strategy intended to identify teachers' cultural expectations through disrupting candidates' perceptions of “normal” students. Data sources include responses to a specific learning activity, interviews, and demographic surveys. Findings indicate that teacher candidates are reluctant to discuss certain demographic descriptors, such as race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, preferring to focus on students' interests and social behaviors. candidates' conceptions of a “normal” student mirror their own experiences. Interview responses suggest that the learning activity disrupted these conceptions. Implications point to the importance of discussing diversity in teacher education courses and the necessity of fieldwork in diverse contexts. © 2011, Copyright Association of Teacher Educators.
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Albeit growing in number, lesbian mothers and their children remain a statistical minority in schools. Lesbian mothers in this study described their families as “normal” or “just like any other family.” From the perspective of queer theory, normal is a socially constructed and insidious concept. This study analyzes both the strategies participants used to be recognized as normal in their children’s schools and the reasons such recognition was perceived to be important by participants. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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Recent debates regarding same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian adoption highlight the role of schools as sociopolitical institutions. Accordingly, teachers operating within social norms have considerable influence through their interactions with students and their families. Previous research points to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) parents' frustrations with their children's schools, particularly as teachers resist representing LGBT families within curricula and fail to intervene when homophobic comments are made. Yet teachers' capacity to embrace diverse family structures while adhering to cultural expectations for teachers remains unexplored. This study, rooted in queer theory, explores the social norms teachers name for parenting in school settings and the way teachers position LGBT parents within these norms. Findings point to social norms for teachers and parents which indicate that teachers operate within heteronormative frameworks. They consider heterosexuality to be normal, while positioning LGBT identities as deviant. This is troubling given documented connections between teacher attitudes and parental involvement and between parental involvement and student achievement. Unchecked, heteronormative practices may result in inequitable school experiences for LGBT parents and their children. Teacher education must minimize heteronormativity through equipping teachers to attend to their own notions and assumptions regarding the intersection of parenting and sexual orientation. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.
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