Queering the English Language Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers

Queering the English Language Classroom provides English language teachers with practical advice for creating queer inclusive educational spaces. It keeps theoretical discussion to a minimum, focusing instead on how to apply advances in LGBTQ+ research in TESOL and applied linguistics to the classroom.

This book highlights how heteronormative classrooms can silence sexually diverse student populations and halt language learning and acquisition processes, and provides research-grounded recommendations for how to challenge normative views of language and culture. In doing so, it advances a queer inquiry pedagogical approach that will help students to see how identity, including sexual identity, is implicated in systems of power and values. It discusses strategies for selecting inclusive curricular content and for troubling mainstream, commercial materials. It also contains advice to teachers on how to handle student and institutional resistance to creating queer inclusive spaces, with a particular note on how to respond to questions in contexts where engaging with LGBTQ+ content can become a fraught exercise.

Queering the English Language Classroom offers an invaluable guide to English language teachers, from pre-/early-service to late-career.