Embodying responsibility? Understanding educators’ engagement in queer educational justice work in schools

Despite extensive policy, regulation, and activism, heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and other forms of oppression, flourish in schools. Based on interviews with educators in schools, queer social movement organizations, school boards and teachers’ unions in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, this chapter analyzes the strategies of queer educational justice work in schools. Working with Gilbert’s call to do more than ‘being on the right side’ and Rasmussen, Sanjakdar, Allen, Quinlivan, and Bromdal’s complications of how we think responsibility, I argue that it is possible to differentiate three strategies of queer educational justice work: reflexive identity politics, intersectional systems critique, and individual humanism. I also contend that responsibility for queer educational justice work is attached to queer educators through fear. It is necessary to analyze this attachment of responsibility to understand how it can undermine the work of QSM and queer educational justice work in schools

Exploring spaces of belonging through analogies of 'family':Perspectives and experiences of disengaged young people at an alternative school

However, they viewed their current, ‘alternative’ places of schooling as spaces of belonging, framed through analogies of ‘family’ and discourses associated with a ‘home’. This chapter explores these young peoples’ perspectives and experiences of belonging using Soja’s concept of spatial justice. The research was conducted over six months with students and staff involved in a documentary film-making project at an alternative school in Queensland. The analysis identified three key spaces of belonging: relational, material, and pedagogical. The relational spaces provided care, supportive relationships, and acceptance that young people associated with a family and that enhanced their capacity to succeed in the pedagogical space. The material space often resembled the environment and structures found in homes and complemented the pedagogical space by providing a safe environment for learning. Finally, the pedagogical space was characterised by structures that enabled students to be supported and guided through meaningful learning experiences they often chose themselves. We propose that such inclusive spaces of belonging are necessary to engage marginalised young people in their education and schooling