Historical Overview and Theoretical Perspectives of LGBTQ+ Themes and Awareness Within the United States K-12 Education System

Introduction

Given the gradual acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ issues by schools beginning in the 90s and into the 00s, one would assume that this increase of scholarly intrigue pertaining to the LGBTQ+ community and K-12 education would align with actual practices, policies, and curricula by the 2010s and 2020s. However, actual progress seems to have halted with “acknowledgment” and never reached an overall genuine “acceptance” or “advocacy” of LGBTQ+ issues within K-12 education. In fact, much scholarship is still focused on securing the ability for LGBTQ+ students to simply exist and cohabitate spaces with heterosexual students/faculty. As of the past two decades, advocates and scholars are still fighting for LGBTQ+ literature, themes, and awareness to be included in K-12 schools (Babino and Dixon, 2020; Block, 2019; Boas, 2012; Dozono, 2022; Information Resources Management Association, 2021; Kean, 2021; Linville, 2017; Logana, et. al., 2016; McGovern, 2012; Murray, 2010, Reid, 2022; Sanders & Mathis, 2013; Sanders, et. al., 2020). Outside of theories and practicum, work has been done to analyze the roles that spaces and extracurricular organizations, such as LGBTQ+ clubs, Gay-Straight Alliances, etc., play in furthering community and ethical centered opportunities for growth and understanding (Boas, 2012; Burrington, 1998; Linville, 2017; Mayo, 2004). In order to achieve genuine, equitable advocacy for LGBTQ+ students within K-12 education, the authors of this chapter argue that crafting curricula, forming pedagogies, and training teachers need to be conducted with mirrors/windows theory at their center (Bishop, 1990). This claim is supported by the work of Style (1996), who noted that “[w]hite males” encounter numerous opportunities to see their identities and values reflected by curricular texts whereas “[w]omen and men of color” struggle to find such texts” (p. 4). While Style’s account does not offer a detailed, all-inclusive account of those affected by established heteronormativity, genderism, and heterosexism within K-12 education, the work itself, when synthesized with the findings of these authors and the following resources, is applicable to the purposes of this chapter. Touching upon the consequences facing children that aren’t able to see their identities (be they racial, gender, sexuality, etc.) reflected in curricular texts, Bishop (1990) asserts that these children “learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part” (p. ix) as well as offers up the following lesson to be learned: “If [students] see only reflections of themselves, they will grow up with an exaggerated sense of their own importance and value in a world-a dangerous ethnocentrism” (p. ix). Botelho (2021) seeks to elaborate upon and provide updated clarifications for these decades-old metaphors. Seeking to move beyond a mindset that inclusivity is not enough, Botelho encourages educators to reconsider “pedagogical practices that solely stretch readers’ cultural imagination and move toward literary study that fosters historical and sociopolitical imagination” (p. 122). Teaching students to analyze multicultural literature that serves as a window into cultures and identities that may be foreign to them is a process that allows for the sense-making of established societal norms, power dynamics, and the active disrupting of these norms and dynamics. Since Botelho’s findings align themselves with the understanding that equitable advocacy for LGBTQ+ students within K-12 education can be achieved through purposeful exposure to, and interactions with, identities that are not heteronormative, it follows that viewing historical accounts of LGBTQ+ themes and awareness within K-12 education with this lens will generate nuanced understandings and, by extension, provide future educators with a mirrors/windows aligned framework that will guide their research.