Investigating Transgender and Gender Expansive Education Research, Policy and Practice

This book addresses an emerging and vital field of scholarship, which deals with transgender- and gender-expansive-informed education, policy, and practice.The collection provides a framework for thinking about the relevance of Transgender Studies for the field of education and specifically for K-12 schooling contexts. It argues for the need to engage transgender-informed epistemologies and provides insight into trans-affirmative education research, policy contexts, and practices with the view to generating knowledge about how the experiences of transgender and non-binary youth, gender non-conformity, and gender-creative expression are being addressed in the education system. Topics addressed range from trans-informed policy analysis and enactment across various contexts to addressing central concerns and polemics related to the policing and regulation of students’ gender identities and expression, with respect to washroom space in schools and the use of gender-neutral pronouns. The book is timely and pertinent, especially given that transphobia and addressing gender justice in the education system have been identified as significant human rights issues which require urgent intervention.Overall, this collection points to both the productive potentialities of this emerging body of research, and the limitations and challenges that need to continue to be addressed in the realization of a commitment to enacting a critical trans politics in education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Gender and Education.

1. Introduction: Transgender and gender expansive education research, policy and practice: reflecting on epistemological and ontological possibilities of bodily becoming 2. Contested spaces: trans-inclusive school policies and parental sovereignty in Canada 3. The policyscape of transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system: a case study 4. Can policies help schools affirm gender diversity? A policy archaeology of transgender-inclusive policies in California schools 5. What’s involved in ‘the work’? Understanding administrators’ roles in bringing trans-affirming policies into practice 6. Problematizing the cisgendering of school washroom space: interrogating the politics of recognition of transgender and gender non-conforming youth 7. The de/politicization of pronouns: implications of the No Big Deal Campaign for gender-expansive educational policy and practice

Wayne Martino is Professor of Equity and Social Justice Education in the Faculty of Education and an affiliate member of the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is currently Principal Investigator on the research project entitled: Supporting Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth in Schools.Wendy Cumming-Potvin is an Associate Professor in the College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education at Murdoch University, Australia, as well as an affiliate member at the International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford, UK. She is an international collaborator on the Social Sciences and Humanities and Research Council of Canada grant Supporting Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth in Schools.