SHH, don’t speak: The act of overcoming silencing and empowering acts of education

Abstract

Silencing appears in various avenues - classroom interactions amongst the teacher and student, hospital situations, gender/sexual identities, bullying, mental health struggles, and other forms, thus relegating individuals to the margins. This paper utilizes queer theory and critical race feminism to examine how dis(abilities) are positioned in relation to normative societal structures. Through the methodological approaches of autoethnography and narrative inquiry, we examine our stories of marginalization and silencing that have occurred in various facets of our lives. For the field of education, these stories can provide a means for other educators to invoke self-reflection on classroom practice as a way of disrupting dominant discourses that foster marginalization and silencing of students.