This book draws upon contemporary Irish and international research which explores the critical interplay between education studies and sexualities.
Scholars from Ireland, Canada, Spain, the U.K. and Sweden employ the conceptual lens of Queer Theory to interrogate and destabilise long-standing regimes of truth/knowledge, and in so doing, highlight the suitability and applicability of this theoretical perspective within educational discourses. By reframing and repositioning gender identity/expression as a performative expression on a fluid continuum, this book provokes readers to (re)view how they see education, pedagogy and schooling. The book interrogates what happens to teaching, and teachers, when queerness permeates their practice, thus exposing the ways in which heteronormativity informs and shapes our places/sites of education.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Irish Educational Studies journal.
Declan Fahie is Director of School Placement and Lecturer in Sociology of Education, Pedagogy and Research Methodology in the School of Education at University College Dublin, Ireland. A qualified primary teacher, Declan has worked extensively as a teacher educator, particularly within initial teacher education. Declan has published nationally and internationally on workplace bullying in education, sexualities and schooling, teacher effectiveness and qualitative research methodologies.
Aideen Quilty is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Social Justice at University College Dublin, Ireland, and is Director of their Gender Studies Community Outreach Programme. Throughout her academic career she has championed the rights of traditionally under-represented and disenfranchised groups within higher education. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on feminist, educational and spatial theories. She has published internationally on LGBTQ empowerment pedagogies and on queer/feminist alliances within education.
Renée DePalma Ungaro is a Professor in the Department of Pedagogy and Didactics at the University of A Coruña, Spain. Her research and teaching has focused on equalities and social justice in terms of race, ethnicity, language, sexuality and gender. From 2006 to 2009, she was Senior Researcher on the UK-based No Outsiders project, a participatory action research project that aimed to address heteronormativity in primary schools.
