Using queer critical literacies in pre-service teacher education to foster critical allyship

Abstract

ABSTRACT The queer critical literacies (QCL) approach to education aims to meaningfully engage with gender and sexuality diversity in educational settings. This article reflects on an English course for final-year Bachelor of Education students at a South African university. In the course, the QCL framework was introduced and texts with diverse gender and sexual identities were prescribed for class discussion and assessment topics. Data were collected from students’ final essay assessments for the course and relevant extracts from selected essays were analysed through thematic content analysis. The findings indicate that the purposeful inclusion of QCL in teacher education courses can enable students to reflect deeply on how they engage with gender and sexuality diversity in their teaching, and the QCL approach can promote positions of critical allyship in pre-service teachers which can make schools more inclusive spaces. However, the data revealed limitations in students’ understandings of diverse gender identities, including the conflation of transgender identities with same-sex sexualities.