Troubling the Teaching and Learning of Gender and Sexuality Diversity in South African Education

In this book, Francis highlights the tension between inclusion and sexual orientation, using this tension as an entry to explore how LGB youth experience schooling.  Drawing on research with teachers and LGB youth, this book troubles the teaching and learning of sexuality diversity and, by doing so, provides a critical exploration and analysis of how curriculum, pedagogy, and policy reproduces compulsory heterosexuality in schools.  The book makes visible the challenges of teaching sexuality diversity in South African schools while highlighting its potential for rethinking conceptions of the social and cultural representations thereof. Francis links questions of policy and practice to wider issues of society, sexuality, social justice and highlights its implications for teaching and learning. The author encourages policy makers, teachers, and scholars of sexualities and education to develop further questions and informed action to challenge heteronormativity and heterosexism.        

• Sexuality diversity
• Education
• Teaching
• Learning
• LGBT youth
• Heterosexism
• Curriculum
• Pedagogy
• Schools
• South Africa

“Given the accessible language usage and clear layout, Francis’ book is a welcome contribution to studies on sexual diversity in education contexts. It provides established scholars, students, and novice researchers with a critically engaged and insider’s exploration and demarcation of the challenges and possibilities for LGB youth in South African schools through a critical pedagogic approach to the schools’ curricula.” (Jacques Rothmann, Journal of LGBT Youth, November, 2017)

“The book Troubling the Teaching and Learning of Gender and Sexuality Diversity in South African Education comes at a critical time in the South African context … . This book is intended for a wide audience, including educators; school administrators; education department officials; those in teacher education; gender and sexuality scholars, researchers and graduate students; or individuals working with LGBTQ nonprofit organizations.” (Percy Mdunge, Journal of Homosexuality, September, 2018)

“This is a thought-provoking, compelling, and pioneering book that unpacks the insidious ways in which heteronormativity shapes schooling in South Africa. It offers new, critical insights on the teaching and learning of gender and sexual diversity in schools, with compelling narratives from LGBT youth and South African Life Orientation teachers. This contribution is timely, disruptive, and important, with crucial implications for policy, curriculum, pedagogy, and teaching. Undoubtedly, this book will be referenced for years to come.” (Thabo Msibi, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Education Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

“We have much to learn from teachers and students whose troubling interventions embody both creativity and courageousness against gender and sexuality-based oppressions in South African schools. The local contingencies of injustice have global implications for anti-oppressive change, as revealed by this important, timely, and movingnew book. The stories will draw you in, and the analysis will call you to action--read your copy today.” (Kevin Kumashiro, Dean and Professor of Education, University of San Francisco, USA, and author of “Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Antioppressive Pedagogy”)

“This reminds us of three important truisms that we often overlook: while law is a necessary guarantee for human rights, it has never been a panacea to social inequalities. Such inequalities need to be tackled by direct political action. Secondly, people’s attitudes often take decades to catch up with progressive laws, implying that the passing of such legislation is not the end point of the struggle but only its beginning. Lastly, an oppressed people will always rise, no matter what. The book is a triumph of hope rather than a history of defeatism.”  (Sylvia Tamale, Professor of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, and editor of “African Sexualities”)

“Francis shows how systemic heterosexism operates in schools and classrooms in South Africa, a country with one of the most progressive constitutional protections of LGBT rights in the world. This book is not about bad teachers, unruly children, or uncaring parents, and it doesn´t provide simplistic answers, but rather analyzes oppression in a way that illustrates the potential for resistance.” (Renée DePalma, Assistant Professor of Educational Sciences, University of A Coruña, Spain, and co-author of “Interrogating Heteronormativity in Primary Schools”)

• Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

  Dennis A. Francis

Dennis A. Francis is a former Dean of Education and currently Professor of Sociology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He has published extensively in the areas of gender and sexuality diversity and schooling.         

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