Safe, Positive and Queering Moments in Teaching Education and Schooling: A conceptual framework

Source: Teaching Education, Volume 18, Issue 3 September 2007, pages 183 - 199

This article introduces a conceptual framework for thinking about the development of anti-homophobia education in teacher education and schooling contexts. We bring the safe, positive, and queering moments framework to bear on three distinct anti-homophobia education practices: coming out stories, homophobic name-calling analysis, and Pride Week activities.

Our analysis of these education practices through the lens of our conceptual framework illuminates its usefulness for thinking through both the intent and impact of anti-homophobia education within classrooms. Importantly, our analysis also reveals that within a classroom of students who are taking up anti-homophobia education in different ways any one moment can be all three - safe, positive, and queering. We advocate an approach to anti-homophobia education that seeks change through the creation of all three moments, and that locates anti-homophobia strategies on points in a constellation of "safe moments", "positive moments", and "queering moments".