Session T-15 - Topics: Diverse Family Structures using Collage-making; Culturally Responsive Science; Queering Writing Pedagogies

Pre-service teachers are frequently underprepared to address Canada’s increasingly diverse and changing family structures, including the growing visibility of LGBTQIA+ families. Although children’s literature—particularly picture books—has been identified as a powerful pedagogical tool for reflecting diverse identities and lived experiences, such texts remain marginalized in many teacher education programs. This marginalization is shaped by heteronormative assumptions, discourses of childhood innocence, and fears of backlash from parents, administrators, and communities. Recent restrictions on access to LGBTQIA+ books in Canadian school districts further underscore the urgency of examining how future teachers engage with this literature. This 15-minute presentation draws on a review of the literature and outlines an upcoming study that explores pre-service teachers’ responses to children’s literature featuring diverse family structures, with particular attention to LGBTQIA+ families. Guided by critical pedagogy, social constructivism, and queer pedagogy, the study examines how these texts function as windows and mirrors that can disrupt heteronormativity and foster inclusive dialogue. Using an arts-based qualitative approach, the presentation will consider how creative, reflective workshops will integrate collaborative discussion, picture book read-alouds, and collage-making with pre-service teachers in a Bachelor of Education (Kindergarten/Elementary) program.

Culturally responsive teaching is effective in developing marginalized students’ self-efficacy, cultural identity, and academic success. It creates meaningful connections between school science and students’ community cultures. Dominant Eurocentric approaches to teaching science may lead to feelings of isolation and marginalization, as well as a disconnection between science and minority students’ lives. This presentation will focus on culturally responsive pedagogies that create inclusive and safe science learning environments, promoting diverse students’ science identities, agency, cultural awareness, competence, and participation in science.

Recently, I’ve had numerous worried conversations with fellow educators about AI use in humanities courses, with professors receiving all manner of uncanny, regurgitated assignment submissions. This rise in AI use undermines the value of a humanities education, and puts additional pressure on educators to figure out a solution. In this teaching culture, we must ask: How can we convey the importance of originality? I propose queering writing pedagogies to curb AI use by motivating students to write personally and artfully. In this paper, I draw from queer composition studies to build a writing pedagogy that prioritizes collaboration and creativity over efficiency and “perfection.” Queer pedagogies think about how we might teach in ways that promote queer methodologies and epistemologies, such as celebrating the excesses of identity, embracing language’s slipperiness, and prioritizing ephemeral experience. For this reason, queer pedagogies are deeply entwined with pedagogies of care and compassion, which reinvest the bifurcated student/teacher, instructed/instructor dyad with the reciprocal flow of conversation. Though this paper does not suggest there is a “fix-all” solution to undergraduates’ generative AI use, queer writing pedagogies remind students of the power of original thought, even – especially – when uncontainable and imperfect.