Queering the English Language Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers provides English language teachers, from pre-/early-service to late-career, with practical advice for creating queer inclusive educational spaces. It does so by keeping theoretical discussion to a minimum, focusing instead on how to apply advances in LGBTQ+ research in TESOL and applied linguistics in their classrooms. This book begins by establishing the continued need to create inclusive classrooms for sexually diverse student populations, by highlighting how heteronormative classrooms may silence students and halt language learning and acquisition processes. It then provides research grounded recommendations for how to trouble normative views of language and culture. In doing so, it advances a queer inquiry pedagogical approach that will help students to see how identity, including sexual identity, is implicated in systems of power and values. This book provides recommendations on how to make the classroom more inclusive by discussing strategies for selecting inclusive curricular content and for troubling mainstream, commercial materials. This book also contains advice to teachers on how to handle student and institutional resistance to creating queer inclusive spaces, with a particular note on how to respond to 'frigid' contexts where engaging with LGBTQ+ content can become a fraught exercise.

Joshua M. Paiz