"I didn't know what to say?" : Four Archetypal Responses to Homophobic Rhetoric in the Classroom

The purpose of this inquiry is to understand how student teachers reacted to homophobic rhetoric from students during their teaching placements. Focus group conversations with 111 student teachers over two years revealed their pupils' negative attitudes towards homosexuality and frequent use of homophobic pejoratives. How did these teachers-in-training deal with these attitudes and behaviors? Did they feel they had the authority, confidence, information, and/or right to challenge these attitudes and verbal abuses? We used a phenomenological lens to focus on the "lived experience" of student teachers dealing with homophobic attitudes, behavior, and speech. Through our participants' narratives, we identify four archetypal scenarios and responses that represent typical reactions of student teachers dealing with homophobic speech in their classrooms: avoiders, hesitators, confronters, and integrators. These archetypes reveal various levels of skill, comfort, and, moreover, willingness to address this particular discriminatory speech in American public schools. In order to move student teachers from avoiders and hesitators to confronters and integrators, teacher preparation programs and school personnel who work with student teachers need to explicitly address LGBTQ issues so that new teachers become informed on the topic via coursework, seminar, and clinical experiences so that they enter the profession with a set of skills that they can employ to counter instances of bigotry aimed at this group of students. Introduction The purpose of this inquiry is to understand how student teachers reacted to homophobic rhetoric from students during their teaching placements. While having conversations with student teachers concerning multiculturalism, their pupils' negative attitudes towards homosexuality and frequent use of homophobic pejoratives was regularly revealed. How did these preservice teachers deal with these attitudes and behaviors? Did they feel they had the authority, confidence, information, and/or right to challenge these attitudes and verbal abuses? We use a phenomenological lens to focus on the lived experience of student teachers dealing with homophobic attitudes, behavior, and speech. Through our participants' narratives, we identify archetypal scenarios and responses that represent four typical reactions of student teachers dealing with homophobic speech in their classrooms. These archetypes reveal various levels of skill, comfort, and, moreover, a willingness to address this particular discriminatory speech in American public schools. While many beginning educators find it difficult to address antihomosexual attitudes and behaviors, we hope that teacher education programs and public school personnel will provide opportunities for practitioners at all levels to gain the knowledge, confidence, and authority to challenge their students' homophobia and create safe classrooms that foster acceptance and a deep regard for diversity. Literature Review Central to the cause of consciousness-raising within multicultural education is the use of narrative (Britzman & Gilbert, 2004). Narratives of the experiences of students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) often tell stories of harassment, name calling and physical abuse. Studies confirm that LGBTQ youth are subject to harassment from peers, are more likely to engage in illicit activities such as drug and alcohol abuse, and suffer from a negative self-image and attempt suicide moreso than heterosexual youth (California Safe Schools Coalition, 2001; Lugg, 1997; Mathison, 1998; Mudrey-Camino, 2002). While this abuse is taking place, LGBTQ youth are an underserved and underrepresented segment of the student population (Mathison, 1998). Male students are most often the targets of homophobic rhetoric "perhaps because sex roles for boys remain, to some extent, more rigidly defined" (Gordon, 1994, p. 86). A common perception among LBGTQ students is that teachers are often complicit in the level of homophobia that pervades the school. …