Sexual Orientation, Social Justice and Teacher Education

Abstract

Social justice concerns in teacher education are commonly restricted to issues of race/ethnicity, class, gender, disability and geographic location. Sexual orientation, as a social justice issue, receives little or no attention in Australia despite evidence that gay, lesbian and bisexual students constitute a disadvantaged group in school systems. This paper makes the case for the inclusion of sexual orientation as a social justice issue in initial teacher education foundations curriculum, however, it is hypothesised that there is likely to be multi‐faceted resistance to this. Pairing the topics of gender and sexuality/sexual orientation is proposed as both a way of circumventing most of the resistance and achieving some useful outcomes. The paper concludes with a consideration of whose responsibility it is to act on this issue.