2019 Volume 28 Pages 84-94
In 2015, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) issued a notification to all schools to address the challenges experienced by the students with gender dysphoria. This notification was far from satisfactory however as it was merely requesting schools to be lenient of imposing gender specific regulations for school uniforms and/or hairstyles. No specific indication was made on pedagogic and educational approaches to address the needs or challenges of students across gender and/or sexuality.
Existing research focuses on curriculum development addressing the issues of sexual minorities, and on providing support for sexual minority students experiencing difficulties in schools. This study aims to identify factors to be addressed in educational practice, with respect to the diversity of gender and sexuality.
This study did semi-structured interviews with four teachers who are sexual minorities. Thematic narrative analysis was used to identify “coming out” as the key guiding principle constituting of their teaching practice.
Teachers from sexual minorities exhibited two particularities in their teaching practices: First, their practice targeted not the specific sexual minority students inside schools, but all the students including majority students, inside and outside of schools. Second, they positions the issues of sexual minority within a larger framework of diversity by critically approaching the mainstream values, such as heterosexism and gender binarism.
This study identifies three areas of limitations and challenges when addressing gender and sexuality in teaching practices. First, teachers from sexual minorities have difficulties to bring forward the issues of sexuality because those issues are very much personal to them. Second, while it is much needed to provide adequate support or accommodation for sexual minority students, such approach offers an escape from critical examination of binarism and keeps mainstream biases against LGBTQ unchallenged. Lastly, it is critical to understand that there are options other than “coming out” or “being in a closet”. Two teachers interviewed suggested “performativity” as a possible option for individuals of sexual minority to identify their sexuality outside of existing LGBTQ categories.
