I’m reading through papers, books and reports related to queerness, the environment, and occasionally other topics. As I read, I’m taking notes so I can refer back to my old readings and remember their key points more easily. Why not post my notes here, so you can all learn with me?

The bulk of the article will be a summary of the reading, and will then end with my thoughts. Square brackets throughout the summary indicate comments from me.

Citation: Higgins, K. (2021). Queer pedagogy for, with and within education for sustainable development. LGBT+ Liberation: LGBT+ lives and issues in the context of normativities UCU Conference, November 2021. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/13249/Queer-pedagogy-for-with-and-within-education-for-sustainable-development/pdf/Queer_pedagogy_-_sustainable_development_Nov22.pdf

Introduction

• The idea of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has come from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Critical pedagogy holds that education is not neutral. It promotes certain viewpoints, which are often harmful, including heteronormativity. These viewpoints used in education, regardless of harm, are shown as the default or even ideal.
• Heteronormativity “promotes patriarchal ideals of giving adult males advantage and control over women, girls, and young men in the public and private spheres”. Queer pedagogy “is concerned with how heteronormativity and patriarchal ideals transfer into how we are educated”.
• Queer pedagogy aims to reject heteronormativity and its harms. These harms include unsustainable development, which is “economically, socially, and environmentally damaging, [and] can be said to be heteronormative and patriarchal and thus anthropocentric as a result”. Queer pedagogy must be included in ESD to push back against the heteronormative elements of unsustainable development.
• This paper explores the links between queer pedagogy and ESD. This would allow for educational practitioners to incorporate queer pedagogy, or for queer pedagogues to further the cause in ESD.

Queering norms

• Normative competence refers to the ability of someone to identify, reflect on, and understand the norms and values that underlie their actions. Queer pedagogy helps us to do this for heteronormativity. “This occurs at the micro-level, such as sexuality and gender barriers to participation (Dorey, 2016) or at the macro-level, such as the continued use of exploitative economic systems (Smith Khanna, 2021).”
• An effective queer pedagogue should:
  • Remove gendered and heteronormative language from classroom materials and discourse.
  • Lean into discussions of queerness when they arise naturally and explicitly tackle subjects that affect queer people.
• Gave an example of a game teachers can use in the classroom.

Queering self-awareness

• Self-awareness competence is “the ability to reflect on one’s own role in the local community and (global) society, continually evaluate and further motivate one’s actions, and deal with one’s feelings and desires”.
• Important to celebrate needs and wants among students so they don’t end up ashamed of any inherent queerness.
• Teachers should [so long as it is safe to do so] self-disclose and speak openly about who they are, bringing their own experiences into the classroom. This helps build rapport with students, too. They can discuss the range of options open to students and follow this up with referral options to engage in events, training programmes, clubs, societies, and more happening in and outside of school.
• Self-reflection fosters self-awareness and there are a variety of tools students can use.
• “(A)ssessment is straight, both figuratively, and literally”. Ask students how they would demonstrate they had learned the material rather than sticking to a one-size-fits-all approach, see if you agree with their methods, and discuss. Somewhere in the middle will be a good way to assess learning for that student.
• Teaching sustainable development should have some element of disappointment so students can get used to failing. Assessment would then need to focus not on the outcome, but with students identifying the skills they learned in the process.

Queering critical thinking

• Critical thinking competence is “the ability to question norms, practices and opinions; reflect on own one’s values, perceptions and actions; and take a position in the sustainability discourse”.
• Queer pedagogy requires the questioning of system and self that comes with critical thinking. This should be done by the teacher audibly and visibly in front of students. This questioning itself can be queered by acknowledging that knowledge can change over time; “the fluidity of knowledge”. You can co-create the inquiry of knowledge with students.
• “Carefully designed, collaborative problem-based learning is known to develop critical thinking skills”. Can use this in conjunction with peer review, to foster critical thinking.

Queering systems thinking

• Systems thinking competence is “the ability to recognise and understand relationships, to analyse complex systems, to perceive the ways in which systems are embedded within different domains and different scales, and to deal with uncertainty”.
• Don’t simplify complexity. Have students analyse non-linear or fuzzy systems. Use process maps or models, look at wicked problems (including sustainable development problems).

Queering future thinking

• Future thinking competence, or anticipatory competence, is “the ability to understand and evaluate multiple futures – possible, probable and desirable – and to create one’s own visions for the future, to apply the precautionary principle, to assess the consequences of actions, and to deal with risks and changes”.
• Threats to sustainable development will perpetuate existing inequalities. Pose questions that highlight inequity and its systemic root causes and then supply information on those topics. Focus on lived experiences of those affected. This requires an intersectional approach.
• Examine how different identities intersect so we don’t shift inequities from one group to another.

Queering strategy

• Strategic competence is “the ability to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield”.
• Dissect how the nonconformity of queer changemakers granted them power, and/or how it stripped them of it.

Queering collaboration

• Collaboration competence is “the ability to learn from others; understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); understand, relate to and be sensitive to others (empathetic leadership), deal with conflicts in a group; and facilitate collaborative and participatory problem-solving”.
• Queer professionals tend to develop excellent listening skills and emotional intelligence. A queered curriculum should include opportunities to teach communication skills.
  • Listening
  • Empathy
  • Emotional intelligence
• Collaboration with peers and teachers is relatively easy as there are strong incentives to do so. Therefore, engaging with community and doing service-based learning are also recommended, as they better represent working within the wider world.

Queering problem-solving

• Problem solving competence is “the overarching ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive and equitable solutions that promote sustainable development”.
• Inquiry-based learning is effective at building problem solving skills. It is co-creative, making it critical of existing practices, if not outright queer. We need to keep asking ourselves key questions as we gather information:
  • What is the true subject?
  • How do we measure?
  • How do we capture narratives and experiences?
  • Are we truly listening?
• We should also be using queer methods of design and communication of participation when proposing solutions [and the paper includes citations for these].

Conclusion

• “When examining queer pedagogy or indeed, any subject, through a queer lens, one is often left with more questions than answers”.
• While queer people may want a more sustainable world, is this feeling returned? The SDGs are silent on us.
  • SDG 5 is about gender equality but only discusses (presumably cis) women.
  • SDG 10 is about reducing inequalities but does not mention sexuality at all.
  • The SDGs do not define discrimination, so nations can report progress if they reduce the number of people reporting harassment.
    • [So if they make it hard to report…]
  • “As a truly queer pedagogue attempting to educate for sustainable development, our first duty is to resist a vision of a future that omits queerness, and that may mean a rapid change to, or even rejection of, the SDGs.”
• How do we queer something as rigidly defined as a competency? If students are unable to “master” these competencies, do they then get excluded from being part of, or shaping, a sustainable future?
• There are many efforts attempting to mainstream ESD. The current conceptualisations of ESD will not serve the ends it is supposedly working towards. In fact, it will exacerbate them. We need queer pedagogy to correct this.

My thoughts

All the definitions for the eight topical headings came from one paper; for anyone who wants it:

Rieckmannn, M. (2018). ‘Learning to transform the world: key competencies in Education for Sustainable Development’, in Leicht, A., Heiss, J., and Byun, W.J. (eds.) Issues and trends in Education for Sustainable Development. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, pp.39-60

This medthodology would need teachers to have a lot more time than they have. So much of the stuff in this paper is awesome, but I can’t see time-poor teachers doing this without more support. I think many would love to, but they are already having all sorts of tasks foisted onto them while education funding continues to fail to meet their needs.

Rejecting the SDGs outright is an interesting thought. Why would we want to use them if we’re not counted? They do still have some interesting frameworks, and they make for a broad language with which to communicate with people. The colours and symbols attached to each SDG can be recognised by sustainability professionals around the world, across different languages. In that way, they are quite powerful. I’m going to sit on this question for a while, methinks.

I hadn’t really thought about what happens to students who fail or do poorly in ESD classrooms. What does happen to them? They’re keen to work on building a better world, to some degree, at least; that’s why they’re there. Where are all these people going? This has struck a chord with me; while I did exceptionally in my Masters, I did perfectly average on my Bachelors and then couldn’t find work. And even with my Masters and the excellent average there, it hasn’t meant much. I got made redundant a few months ago and now I’m trying to find work, but it’s not looking good. Where the fuck are we supposed to go? I might leave this here for now, but I might pick this thought up again later.