Language Arts Teachers’ Resistance to Teaching LGBT Literature and Issues

In recent years, scholars and other educators have encouraged language arts teachers to include LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) issues and texts in their classrooms. Despite these efforts, scholars have pointed out that LGBT perspectives are seldom included in language arts pedagogy. Studies of teacher attitudes toward addressing LGBT themes in the language arts classroom suggest that teachers’ conflicted beliefs about these issues are at play in this absence. This study examines the discursive strategies used by current and prospective language arts teachers in an online course on multicultural literature instruction to justify and qualify why they held anti-homophobic views but simultaneously could not or would not teach LGBT texts and issues in their classrooms. This study provides useful implications for language arts teachers and teacher educators aimed at questioning status quo discourses and taking up more active stances toward combating homophobia and heteronormativity in language arts classrooms.