Navigating the relationship between policy and practice: competing discourses of fear and care in teachers’ sense-making about the FAIR Education Act

Abstract

In this article, I examine the relationship between large-scale social discourses and local, school discourses as it plays out in conversations about gender and sexuality with and among teachers, specifically in the context of the passage of the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act in California. Grounded in feminist poststructural theories of discourse, I discuss qualitative data from a year-long study at one public middle school in Southern California where I provided professional development. I examine what happens when teachers are given opportunities to make sense of their roles in attending to topics of gender and sexual diversity, through conversations and dialogue. The following research questions guided my analyses: What themes arise in teachers’ conversations about their roles and responsibilities in the implementation of the FAIR Education Act? (How) are these themes produced in relationship with large-scale social discourses about gender and sexual diversity in schools? I argue that examining this relationship provides key insights into the ways teachers make sense of equity-focused policies that are meant to shift sociopolitical paradigms, and their roles and responsibilities in the implementation of such policies.