This talk aims at conceptualizing much-needed interventions into teacher education that empower foreign language teachers for queering their classroom practices. It will present a ‘docking-station’ of texts and tasks that teachers can use to diversify their teaching, and to end the silencing of LGBTIQ+ perspectives that prevails until today.
Time and again, foreign language education has been charged with reproducing a monosexual and heteronormative view of the world – thus eclipsing LGBTIQ+ perspectives as an important dimension of cultural diversity from the classroom. At the same time, a distinct and productive strand of research has engaged with foreign language education from a critically queer and heteronormative point of view, spearheading a thorough and rigorous legitimization for 'queering' and transforming all facets of the discipline (e.g. classroom practices and methodologies, research agendas, or materials publishing). With queer and LGBTIQ+-inclusive thinking being well underway to achieve visibility and representation, what remains as a critical challenge is to prepare and empower future and in-service teachers for 'queering' their classrooms and their educational practices. This talk seeks to close this gap by providing insights into foreign language teacher education at the intersection of Queer Theory. It conceptualizes which avenues of Queer Theory are productively portable into foreign language education that allow for both engaging with LGBTIQ+ diversity and deconstructing heteronormativity and bi-gendered systems. Against this backdrop, this talk will present a subject-specific queer-informed 'docking station' as a powerful tool for teachers to integrate queer perspectives into their everyday work. The remainder of this talk will propose ensembles of texts and typologies of tasks as a generalizable yet concrete compass for teachers to transform learning and teaching opportunities with a queer lens.
