Prevailing heteronormative discourses in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand present difficulties for upholding the right of gender diverse tamariki ("children") and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer-parented families to experience belonging in equitable, inclusive early childhood settings. The purposeful…

This article proposes that a queer reading of failure might offer opportunities to re-think the affective-political practice of doctoral writing. It examines data from one case in Aotearoa New Zealand to illustrate how a doctoral student negotiates "failure" in relation to their writing practice and identity. While higher education…

Dominance in any sector prevents minority voices from being heard. Challenging dominance can be vulnerable, especially if the challenger identifies as part of a minority group. Marginalisation and silencing of issues pertaining to the gay community have long been the accepted norm in the education sector (Lee & Duncan, 2008; Robinson 2002).…

This article discusses how the friendship circles of 38 schoolboys in New Zealand influence what they consider acceptable language and behaviour. Six focus group sessions were held with heterosexual and self-identified queer students aged between thirteen and eighteen to explore their interpretations, meanings and usage of homosexually themed…

Researchers often experience difficulties recruiting hard-to-reach populations. This is especially so for studies involving those who have been historically stigmatized, such as individuals who challenge heteronormative expectations or people who experience mental ill health. The authors aimed to obtain the views of sexual minority adolescents (n…

The nature of sex/ualities, genders and schooling has changed considerably over the last 20 years, with global political, social and cultural shifts bringing the lives of queer youth to the fore. Trans youth are now more visible and various kinds of support groups in schools (such as diversity support groups, queer groups and gay-straight…

Drawing on data from an Aotearoa/New Zealand study of more than 230 secondary students, this article evaluates the potential of a 60-min gender diversity workshop to address bullying and promote positive environments for learning. Students completed pre- and postworkshop questionnaires. The authors used descriptive statistics to summarize results…

This article is concerned with interrogating what has evolved as "normal" representations of the schooling experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students in literature concerned with social/sexual justice. It argues that these representations necessitate understanding LGBT within a binary of either…

Supervisors supporting queer individuals engaged in postgraduate research in Visual Arts face a number of issues. Beyond concerns with balancing the autobiographical and the scholarly, a supervisor may also encounter questions relating to safety, identity, tokenism, exoticisation and the pressure candidates feel to develop work that has…

Higher education (HE) researchers, like their colleagues across the humanities and social sciences, are increasingly tuning in to the political possibilities offered by working with emotion and affect. Reading across this work, it would seem that certain practices, and their associated affects, have achieved an aura of legitimacy, and political…

Purpose: Previous research examining the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth in schools suggests that schools are not inclusive places for non-heterosexual students. Some scholars, however, suggest that a continued focus on how these young people are marginalised is itself a problem, and that research should also…

This paper revisits the missing discourse of female desire [Fine, M. 1988. Sexuality, schooling and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. "Harvard Educational Review" 58, no. 1: 29-53] in secondary schools. Instead of echoing previous studies that have documented how female desire is missing, this research starts from the…

There is a small body of work examining how picture books can be used with young children and their families to develop understandings of contemporary issues including diversity and practices towards inclusion. This article describes a study in one New Zealand kindergarten that explored teachers' interpretations of children's responses to a…

The experiences of lesbian, gay, trans (The use of trans with an asterisk avoids the use of transsexual or transgender and promotes recognition of the inadequacy of such labels), bisexual and intersex (LGBTI) student teachers were recently investigated at a New Zealand faculty of education. Student teachers studying in early childhood education…

Drawing on the notion of popular culture as a form of queer emotional provocation, in this paper I suggest that attending to the material enactment of queer pedagogies in context enables an understanding of the importance of attending more fully to the emotional ramifications of queer pedagogies. Working within the context of a research project…