LGBTQ teachers and the location of difference in English schools

Abstract

Until recently, most research in the area of sexuality and schooling has focused upon young people and largely overlooked the experiences of LGBTQ adults working within schools. This chapter examines the experiences of LGBTQ teachers in England as they negotiate professional lives that are characterised by practices that minoritise non-heterosexual identities, illustrated by participants’ experiences of explicit homophobia and heterosexist gender regimes within their schools as well as more subtle forms of othering Drawing on the Every Child Matters government initiative, and anti-bullying strategies, this chapter gives voice to LGBTQ teachers’ reflections, articulations and understandings of themselves and of the schools within which they work offers insight into the differing ways in which sexual diversity is framed within English schools.