Panel H.07 — Queering pedagogy. Contributions and challenges of pedagogical and educational research on gender, sexuality and sociocultural normativities

Convenors Giuseppe Burgio (Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”, Italy); Antonio Raimondo Di Grigoli (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy); Alessia Ale* Santambrogio (Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”, Italy)

Keywords queering, pedagogy, gender, normativities, education

 

This panel aims to open a critical reflection on the state of the art of queer pedagogy in Italy. Aware of the invaluable contributions that Italian gender pedagogy has made in recognizing gender as a pedagogical problem (Burgio, 2015), we ask what dialogue this discipline can establish with queer pedagogy and what elements of continuity, divergence, and innovation can be introduced by the latter.

The seminal works of Bryson & de Castell (1993), Britzman (1995), and Luhmann (1998) outline a pedagogical proposal that is agentically queer, as it deliberately interferes in the production of normalcy in school contexts, undermining the supposed essentialism of identities, particularly the sexual ones. In these pedagogical works, heterosexuality and heteronormativity are understood both as contents of curricula, and precise ways of producing the body of knowledge and the knowledge of the body, based on conceptual and hierarchical dualisms that establish who has the legitimacy to exist and who does not.

Building on these contributions, this panel takes on queer in a threefold pedagogical valence: as an interference with the oppressive dynamics acted out in the educational and social field; as an active construction recognition, legitimacy, and possibility for each subject of education, and all; and as a tool for critiquing the epistemological status of pedagogy and educational methodologies.

From this perspective, we recognize that education has the potential to work for effective social justice and promote an ethical project in which differences are seen as “the grounds of politicality and community” (Britzman, 1995, p. 152).

The ambition is to broaden the field of pedagogical investigations from a queer perspective, looking not only at schools, but at the formal, non formal, and informal educational contexts, and the plurality of subjectivities and social groups involved in them.

We welcome contributions that explore the complexities of educational contexts and relationships, as well as the power dynamics circulating in them; analyze the weight that binarisms (not only the heterosexual/homosexual one) have in closing opportunities to those who do not adhere, in whole or in part, to the privileged model of the cisgender, straight, white, wealthy, able-bodied male; propose alternative ways of constructing knowledge to transmissive methods; experiment with creative educational research methodologies; investigate the transformative potential of education.

We are particularly interested in proposals that explore the following topics from a queer pedagogical perspective:

  • Queer pedagogy epistemologies

  • LGBTQIA+ subjectivity in education

  • Identity and desires fluidity in education

  • Subjectivation processes in developmental age and adult educators

  • Queer masculinities

  • Neurodivergent Subjectivities and Neuro Queer Theory

  • Intersectionality and queer knowledge

  • Educational research methodologies

  • Curriculum, teaching practice, and queerness

  • Adultism, adultcentrism, and queer pedagogy

  • Gender-based violence in education

  • Queer pedagogy and the deconstruction of cis-heteronormativity

  • Pedagogical and caring work in 0-6 educational services and at school

  • Political activism, education, and research

  • Pop pedagogy and queerization of cultural models

  • Ecology, anti-speciesism, and queer

  • Decoloniality, post-coloniality, and epistemologies of the South

  • Trans* pedagogies

  • Crip theory and education

 

⇢ Guidelines and abstracts submission