Not only does teaching about gender and sexuality diversity lead to some very interesting and often emotionally evocative, pedagogical exchanges; it can also create challenging issues for teachers and students alike. This article focuses on what happens when a module that addresses compulsory heterosexuality and schooling is broached in an…

Pedagogical issues are rather popular in the world's cinematography. Images of school and university teachers occupy a special place in it. Hoping to attract as many viewers as possible the cinematography prefers to refer not to everyday routine education process but to "hot spots" of teaching associated mainly with sex, lies and…

Based on classroom readings and discussions of William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice," this Voices from the Field article examines the ways that teachers might use traditional canonized texts to encourage students to both critique and react against bullying behaviors. The author's experiences detail the narratives that students…

In other work I have argued that decisions about what to teach directively and what non-directively should be governed by an epistemic criterion. Trevor Cooling has recently advanced some objections to my defence and application of the epistemic criterion and proposed an alternative to it. Here I reply to his objections and comment on his proposed…

In this essay, I develop a pedagogical stance called the "free exercise of rhetoric" as a way to approach teaching and student writing at the intersection of LGBT and religious discourses. Through this stance, I work with students' personal commitments and build their rhetorical competence using a process that involves encountering uncommon…

Teachers want to do their best for every child, but worry about causing offence and often shy away from troublesome issues. The classroom situations and strategies presented here will help teachers negotiate their way through complex situations and bring about constructive change. This book clarifies concepts and value differences and the subtle…

The film "BULLY" follows five stories of children and families who are affected deeply by bullying within the course of a school year. With intimate glimpses into homes, classrooms, cafeterias, and principals' offices, the film offers insight into the lives of bullied, ridiculed children. Historically, seemingly small instances of…

Social work strives to be inclusive of all cultural groups and religious identities. However, a tension exists in the profession between freedom of religious expression and full acceptance of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. David Hodge and others claim social work is oppressive to evangelical Christians. This article critiques primarily Hodge's…

School psychologists are adult learners. They support children and youth within the K-12 system who are facing academic, emotional, behavioral, or systematic barriers to education. Among the most vulnerable are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth, and school psychologists need to learn to be LGBTQ competent. The purpose of…

With germinal texts, new writings, and related art, "Sexualities in Education: A Reader" illuminates a broad scope of analysis and organization. Composed of a framing essay and nine sections edited by established and emerging scholars and addressing critical topics for researchers and students of sexualities and education, the text…

Teachers want to do their best for every child, but worry about causing offence and often shy away from troublesome issues. The classroom situations and strategies presented here will help teachers negotiate their way through complex situations and bring about constructive change. This book clarifies concepts and value differences and the subtle…

Conflict can shut down communication, the key to social justice advocacy. In this article, the author shares his insights on how some communication strategies can help manage conflict and sustain open conversation with students about contentious issues. Recently, the author participated in an extremely heated discussion session for student affairs…

For over a decade, battles have raged between conservative Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) sexuality education advocates and liberal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) advocates. While these battles have focused on the inclusion of health information about contraception and whether or not a curriculum must advocate abstinence as the…

This article describes a student affairs practitioner's experience with co-instructing a course entitled, "Queer(y)ing Religion and Spirituality". The ways practitioners can facilitate difficult dialogues with students about the intersection of spirituality and GLBT issues are explored.

Christian fundamentalist religious beliefs, expressed by social work students, present a challenge to the social work educator. In this paper we explore the tensions between Fundamentalism, diverse sexual orientation and gender expression and social work pedagogy. Particularly, we focus on how an anti-oppressive pedagogical approach, while…