A Literature Review on Queer Frameworks for Education & Literacy

Research Paper by Maria Lisak

KOTESOL Intl Conf 2019

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Abstract

• Three articles are outlined regarding queer literacy and connected to teaching English in South Korean classrooms. Critical memoirs of a gay educator show reflective conversations tracing the discursiveness of learning which help him to navigate his personal and professional paths within the education system. Discussion from previous workshops in South Korea on LGBTQ+ topics are shared as a collective critical memoir. An article on the theory and application of queer literacy frameworks will be outlined and shown how they can inform curriculum choices. Additionally, an article on the affective alignment of emotional labor and its impact on inclusion are connected to the experiences of English teachers in Korean classrooms. 

Resources Referenced

• Three articles are outlined regarding queer literacy and connected to teaching English in South Korean classrooms.
• In Burns & Johnson’s “Reconciling the Personal and the Professional: Coming Out from the Classroom Closet” in Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs (2019), critical memoirs of a gay educator show reflective conversations tracing the discursiveness of learning which help him to navigate his personal and professional paths within the education system.
• In 2018 in a workshop titled “Students Discuss Queer Topics: How Educators Can Foster Communication” participant discussion was categorized by myself and attendees and will be shared as potential critical autobiography of our teaching experiences.
• An article on the theory and application of queer literacy frameworks, Miller’s 2015 “A queer literacy framework promoting (a) gender and (a) sexuality self-determination and justice” in English Journal, will be outlined, and show how this framework can inform curriculum choices by addressing teacher development in South Korea.
• Additionally, an article, “A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling” in Gender and Education by Neary, Gray, & O'Sullivan (2016), on the affective alignment of emotional labor and its impact on inclusion will be connected to the experiences of English teachers in Korean classrooms.

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Critical Memoir

In Burns & Johnson’s “Reconciling the Personal and the Professional: Coming Out from the Classroom Closet” in Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs (2019),

• A critical memoir of a gay educator
• reflective conversations over time & work
• discursiveness of learning via living & teaching
• navigates his personal and professional paths
• USA education system

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Social Justice & Critical Pedagogy

• Two critical incidents are examined
• Explicit use of critical pedagogy unacceptable
• Supportive environment of critical pedagogy
• Authors
• A teacher
• A teacher trainer
• Example Narrative
• Author theorizing

Critical Autobiography

• 2018 Workshop:“Students Discuss Queer Topics: How Educators Can Foster Communication”
• participant discussion was categorized by myself and attendees
• How can these workshops lead to critical autobiographies of our work in our classrooms?

Queer Literacy Frameworks

• theory and application of QLF
• Miller’s 2015 “A queer literacy framework promoting (a) gender and (a) sexuality self-determination and justice” in English Journal

QLF & Teacher Development �in South Korea

QLF helping Curriculum Choices

Inclusion:�Shifting emotional labor

• Additionally, an article, “A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling” in Gender and Education by Neary, Gray, & O'Sullivan (2016),
• [Hochschild’s (1979) Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 85: 551–575
• (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press] concepts of emotional labour and feeling rules
• Ahmed’s affective economies [(2004a) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York:
• Routledge; (2004b) “Affective Economies.” Social Text 22 (2): 117–139; (2008)
• “Sociable Happiness.” Emotion, Space and Society 1: 10–13; (2010) The Promise
• of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press] and
• queer phenomenology [(2006a) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. London: Duke University Press; (2006b) “Orientations: Towards a Queer Phenomenology.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 12 (4): 543–574]
• as a way to address wider questions about sexuality and schooling.

Neary, A., Gray, B., & O'Sullivan, M. (2016). A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling. Gender and Education, 28(2), 250-265.

Emotional Labor

• Emotional labour denotes ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’ (Hochschild 1983, 7). According to Hochschild, Goffman’s emphasis is on ‘surface acting’; that is, how people try to appear to feel. In contrast, the emotion-management perspective (Hochschild 1979) focuses on ‘deep acting’; that is, the act of consciously trying to feel, and not on the outcome (successful or unsuccessful) of this work.
• Hochschild (1979, 562) categorises the techniques of emotional labour as cognitive
• (attempts to change images or thoughts in order to change associated feelings),
• bodily (attempts to change physical symptoms of emotion) and expressive (attempt
• to change expressive gestures in order to change inner feelings). Using these techniques,
• emotional labour involves evoking feeling (where the cognitive focus is on a
• desired feeling that is absent) and/or suppressing feeling (where the cognitive focus
• is on an undesired feeling that is present) (Hochschild 1979, 561). While the ‘deep’
• acting of emotional labour risks interpretation as reproducing an internal/external
• dualism and failing to account for the complex ways that action and emotion are
• entwined, the concept offers a pointed concentration on the techniques employed
• and the lasting, embodied effects of such attempts to feel.

Neary, A., Gray, B., & O'Sullivan, M. (2016). A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling. Gender and Education, 28(2), 250-265.

Affective Alignment

• Affect: the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes; a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion

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• Emotional economies
• Queer phenomenology of affect
• Creating & following
• Conforming & transgressing

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Affective & Emotional Impact on Inclusion

• the minutiae of individual (often invisible), emotional labour in school-based social interactions sheds light on, and interrupts, the apparent effortlessness of everyday negotiations,
• revealing the ways that (hetero)normative logics are simultaneously inculcated, resisted and reformed.
• Such focused attention on the techniques of emotional labour and the inculcated workings of norms disrupts simplistic, ‘inclusive’ solutions so often set forth in relation to sexualities in schools.

Neary, A., Gray, B., & O'Sullivan, M. (2016). A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling. Gender and Education, 28(2), 250-265.

How is this playing out in �South Korean classrooms?

• The pervasive impact of heteronormative assumptions is such that limits are set on the negotiation of viable subjectivity within schools.
• In the face of threats to legitimacy, bodies ‘ride over’ feelings of discomfort, conform to heteronormative practices and become aligned in a collective facing towards the promise of a happy school environment and heterosexuality as a collective good.
• Discourses of equality and inclusion promise happiness, but these theories show how this very happiness is itself a mechanism through which heteronormativity is reproduced.
• As such, the appearance of equality and inclusion works towards the maintenance of the status quo.

Cultural dissonance brings into harsh relief the labor required to negotiate meaning. �Traditional gender roles of communication are implicitly graviated towards in Korean�classrooms. Perforations or resistance to heteronormative assumptions are often ignored�or misread as an uncooperative visiting teacher.

Thank you

• References
• Burns, R. & Johnson, J. Reconciling the Personal and the Professional: Coming Out from the Classroom Closet. Chapter 3 Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs. Eds sj Miller & N.M. Rodriguez. Peter Lang. 2019?
• Mason, K. (2014). Out of the Closet and onto the Playing Field: Two Decades of Lesbian Athletes in YA Literature. English Journal, 54-61.
• Miller, S. J. (2015). A queer literacy framework promoting (a) gender and (a) sexuality self-determination and justice. English Journal, 37-44.
• Neary, A., Gray, B., & O'Sullivan, M. (2016). A queer politics of emotion: Reimagining sexualities and schooling. Gender and Education, 28(2), 250-265.

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