Below is a summary of findings under themes I identified across three interviews. Participant A identifies as a gay man and ‘ally for all other parts of the rainbow’. Participant B identifies as a non-binary trans person. Participant C, identifies as a cisgender gay man and person of colour.
I did not ask about age or nationality, but it emerged that Participants A and C are in unit or course leading roles and did not grow up in the UK, while Participant B is a technician.
Attached as an Appendix is a selection of related ‘cleaned’ excerpts from interviews organised thematically. The full original interview transcriptions are also attached.
Queer Identity and Student Work
All participants noted the significance of storytelling and queer themes in student work. Participant C made his personal queer history central in course materials to establish an environment of safe personal sharing, noting ‘I showcase a picture of me as a drag queen’. Participant A included queer content but did not centre themselves. Participant B does not shape course content or stress their identity in a technical role, but observes queer themes in student work.
Tutor Visibility
Participant C consciously renders their queer identity visible through appearance. Participant A established themselves as a queer point of contact for both staff and students, making themselves known as a queer advocate verbally and through signals such as their e-mail signature. Participant B did not consider themselves a beacon for queer students in a majority queer space. They rather struggled for recognition of their gender identity by staff, students and in administration.
Teaching Strategies
Participant A noted that queer students often ‘came out’ to him and practices inclusive representation in course materials and encourages student criticality. Participant C discussed ‘compassionate pedagogy’, seeing himself in a ‘parenting role’, whereas Participant A stressed the supplying information, which ranged from counselling to sexual health. Participant B did not link their queer identity to most student interactions. They didn’t note observation of queer student identity struggle but made practical interventions, such as de-gendering class materials, discussing pronouns and diverse bodies with students.
Communities and Networks
Participant C remembered the psychological-emotional significance of a supportive tutor and queer community, which they tried to emulate for students. Participant A stressed productive overlap between queer sociality and ‘networks of practice’, encouraging students to bond and participate in social-professional networks outside university. Both foregrounded student life as what Participant A described as ‘a formative time’. As a technician, Participant B rather witnessed than encouraged, the intense bonding of queer students. They also remembered that being told their peers would be future colleagues, had inhibited their early identity expression.
Tutor Identities, Histories and Contexts
Participant B hadn’t anticipated the necessity of discussing pronouns and related this to the international cohort. While not a significant barrier, ‘to reveal an alternative sexuality [or gender identity] to cross-cultural cohorts is also an inherently political act’ (Bennet et al, 2015, p. 717). It is similar to the Participant C’s resistance through self-presentation, which they described as ‘claiming space’.
Participant C emphasised widespread homophobia in his youth. Participant A reflected that his formal distance, especially with gay male students, relates to his early internalisation of suspicion associated with gay men in education. While both participants are not from the UK, the infamous Section 28 is emblematic of state-sanctioned queer silencing in a period in which many current teaching staff were themselves educated (Gaian, 2023; Lee, 2023; Blue Jean, 2022).
Participant A and C’s comments suggest they regard themselves as gay elders (Rosenfeld, 2003), relating empathetically to queer student struggles. Participants A and C are gay men in senior roles, whose early identities formed in relation to the AIDS crisis and institutionalised homophobia but whose gay identity is now widely recognised, unlike continuing public discourse on trans and non-binary gender identities. Participant C acknowledged this privilege, which does not apply to Participant B.
Bibliography
Bennett, R., Hill, B. and Jones, A. (2015) ‘In and out of the cross-cultural classroom closet: Negotiating queer teacher identity and culturally diverse cohorts in an Australian university’, Higher Education Research and Development, 34(4) pp. 709-721
Blue Jean (2022) Directed by G. Oakley [Feature film]. Altitude Films.
Gaian, K. (2023) Twenty-eight: Stories from the Section 28 generation. Southampton: Reconnecting Rainbows
Lee, C. (2023) Pretended: schools and Section 28: Historical, cultural and personal perspectives. London: John Catt
Rosenfeld, D. (2003) The changing of the guard: Lesbian and gay elders, identity and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press