This course explores the role of gender and sexuality in shaping young people’s schooling experiences, opportunities, and outcomes, and the role of schooling experiences in shaping young people's notions of gender and sexuality. In many ways, the course is about the "hidden curriculum" of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, or the subtle practices in schools that privilege heterosexual, gendered identities and ways of being. As such, students in the course will apply the concept of the hidden curriculum to the study of gender and schooling in order to understand why and how children and youth with different gender identities experience schooling differently and why and how heteronormative schooling detrimentally impacts all students.
By the end of the module, students should be able to: (1) Talk comfortably about queer history and how it can inform our understanding of schools and schooling; (2) identify specific strategies that educators at various levels might use to support students in negotiating gender and sexuality norms; (3) identify tools that schools can use to build positive, nurturing environments, which open up possibilities for complex gender and sexual identity development; and (4) analyze and evaluate a variety of school practices, curricula, programs, and policies that seek to support healthy gender and sexual identity development for U.S. children and adolescents. In order to achieve these goals, the course will begin with some theoretical and historical grounding, move into an exploration of dominant narratives of gender and sexuality today, and then begin to explore where there is possibility for change. The course will provide opportunities to consider the ways in which other elements of identity (e.g., race, culture, socioeconomic status, age, religion, geography, etc.) intersect with gender and sexuality in the process of identity development. Although schools will be the central setting examined, course materials are also applicable to community-based settings. This course will take a heavily practice-based approach, building on case studies and guest speakers with direct experience in the field.
EDU H210P