Choosing to Include Gay Issues in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Coursework: One Professor’s Journey

Abstract

If preservice teachers are to be capably prepared to meet the challenges of classroom and community diversity, teacher educators have a responsibility to address the full range of diversity issues in teacher preparation coursework, despite controversial or political overtones that may exist. Among these issues is that of considering and responding appropriately to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students and children of LGBT parents. This article presents a narrative account of the personal and professional journey that led a heterosexual professor at a large, conservative, state university in the Midwest to integrate gay issues into undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation coursework in early childhood education (birth through Grade 3). It includes an analysis of students’ reactions to the issue of gay parents and a description of methodologies and resource materials useful in teacher preparation coursework and in early childhood and elementary classrooms, as well as a discussion of societal trends and the implications of including children being raised in lesbian- and gay-headed households under the umbrella of classroom-diversity considerations.