Education research as a whole is a low-consensus field (Renn, 2020). Scholars come at their work from a wide range of epistemological perspectives, identifying questions in theory and practice that can be illuminated by an increasingly diverse array of intellectual approaches. Studies of queer and trans people, of queerness and transness, and of queering and transing educational spaces and practices reflect this larger phenomenon. Twenty-five years ago, when education researchers gathered for the (then called) Lesbian and Gay Studies Special Interest Group (SIG) pre-conference workshop at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) the possibility of “low consensus” among scholars doing research on queer topics was hard for some of us to imagine. It was still a time of coming together, of seeking solidarity and consensus as a survival strategy in an academy hostile to the idea of queer scholarship, particularly in schools of education where capitulations to homophobia and transphobia fed pervasive “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t make us acknowledge you” approaches to dealing with queer education scholars and scholarship.
Despite this felt need to create communities within queer education research circles—the kind of community that the co-editors of this volume describe finding as colleagues at Auburn University—scholars kept mainly to the established areas of education research. Even queer theoretical dispositions could not overcome the power of our socialization into established divisions and academic departments. We studied curriculum, leadership, and teaching in K-12 schools (e.g., Kumashiro, 2002), or higher education policies related to queer students (Dilley, 2002). We explored histories of queer public school teachers (Blount, 2006) or perhaps identities and experiences of LGBT college students or faculty (Bilodeau & Renn, 2005; Sears, 2002). The richness, depth, and diversity within each of these areas has increased and there are queer and trans studies across the range of education topics. Yet for the most part, queer education research has retained the overall contours of education research divided by topics and subtopics. This volume is the result of the co-editors’ ongoing efforts to stop reproducing these artificial boundaries.
Bridging the gap is inherently queer; it is an inherently transing activity. Education researchers as a whole are not especially experienced with working outside our areas. Yet we frequently acknowledge that creating equitable and safe learning settings from early childhood through adult education requires
This volume also queers things up in another important way. Thinking back to the Lesbian and Gay Studies SIG of 25 years ago I remember feeling like putting up a united front, even if it that unity was a fiction, was a tactic to gain legitimacy for queer education research in the academy. Airing differences among us was best done behind closed doors. Alienating pathbreaking senior colleagues by challenging their methods, assumptions, racism, sexism, and genderism did not seem in the best interests of emerging scholars. The nature of scholarly inquiry requires questioning existing knowledge, but in a field with few LGBTQ+ senior colleagues the stakes felt especially high. Whether or not those established scholars actually held the gatekeeping power I imagined, it would take some courage to articulate a queer education research agenda beyond the “lesbian and gay studies” framework (see Meyer, 2013a, 2013b). Fortunately, pathbreaking work by scholars like Kevin Kumashiro (2001, 2002), Eric Rofes (2000, 2005), Ed Brockenbrough (2012, 2013, 2015), Roland Coloma (2006), Genny Beemyn (2005), Darris Means (Means, 2017; Means & Jaeger, 2013), Z Nicolazzo (2016a, 2016b) and many authors in this volume has continued to demonstrate that educational research, theory, and practice have the capacity to expand, deepen, and broaden. Weaving threads across and between the work of these scholars is essential for the present and the future of queer education research, queer educators, and queer learners across the lifespan. The chapters and responses in this volume create a space to hold disagreements, concurrence, questions, and reframings. As a whole they show that queering up knowledge creation to be about the differences among us, not in spite of those differences, is a way forward not only for queer education research but potentially for education research as a whole.
The stakes for this expansive view of queer education scholarship are high. Transgender students and educators are under attack in legislatures and school corridors. Queers of color face multiple threats in educational settings that should be places of safety and love. Decades of queer education research have done much to illuminate what is wrong and what could be right to create equitable, safe, humane, and just educational environments, but by keeping our work separated into the artificial boundaries of the larger field of education
To be clear, bridging the gaps does not mean that queer education research must lose its potential as a low-consensus field to bring in new ideas, methodologies, and creativity (see Renn, 2020). Indeed, bridging the gaps creates new spaces for imagining a more queer- and trans-liberatory, anti-racist future for queer education research. If it is truly queer(ed), then this future will be a model for the field of educational research for lowering the barriers to working with and against ideas from across existing boundaries. This volume is both an example for queer education research and a call to our colleagues in other areas of education research to join us.
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