Exploring how queer teachers of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) negotiate sexuality in the classroom

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This article presents a small-scale qualitative research project that explores how four queer teachers of English for speakers of other languages negotiate sexuality in the classroom and considers how it shapes their understanding of themselves, their students and their teaching practice. The project employs the conceptual tools of queer theory and a poststructuralist approach to policy studies as a means to illuminate some of the discourses employed by these teachers. Using semi-structured interviews to generate data and a thematic analysis, the article discusses how the teachers conceive of ‘outness’ as being desirable but threatening to classroom dynamics. It also explores some of the assumptions behind this, suggesting that, through parallel constructions of the English for speakers of other languages student as homophobic, and of the UK as tolerant, a discourse of homonationalism emerges.