On 15 April the UK Supreme Court announced that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex and not legal gender. This has significant implications for the teaching of language and literacy. In particular, it raises issues concerning how gender and sexuality are addressed in an inclusive way in the literacy curriculum, and how students are empowered to undertake critical analysis of texts and the stances they represent.
UKLA would like to reiterate the following core values set within our mission statement:
- a broad and balanced literacy curriculum which is critical, creative and affective.
- learning opportunities which respect the linguistic, social and cultural resources that learners bring to the classroom.
- teaching which addresses both cognitive, personal, affective and ethical development.
- access to the best texts – in print, digital and multimodal forms – written for children and young people, reflecting diverse interests and cultures.
The UKLA values are applicable to (a)gender and (a)sexually diverse staff and students alike. We therefore offer ‘encouragements’ and ‘cautions’ in view of these values:
We encourage practices of critical literacies, critical media literacy, and critical writing that engage children, young people, and adults with authentic texts, social issues, and changing forms of information from a diverse range of perspectives and communities.
We caution against the quick acceptance of narrow descriptions or definitions of what constitutes complex human experiences, behaviours, and identities, particularly where it may affect access to and engagement with a rich language and literacy learning experience (such as reading and writing for pleasure, representation of diverse people and experiences, and classrooms that foster belonging).
We encourage practices of enquiry where children, young people, and adults learn to use language and literacy to identify, deconstruct, and reconstruct meaning through a social justice lens. This can be achieved, in part, by accessing texts by diverse people and communities (including those most marginalised) that describe their wide ranging experiences in contexts of formal learning, reading for pleasure, and through consistent practices of critical questioning.
We caution against any restrictions on children, young people, and adults that limits their capacity to articulate their identities, experiences, and empathy/solidarity-building.
We encourage children, young people, and adults to explore language and literacy as a means to understand themselves, each other, and the world through the lens of social justice and ethics.
Overall, we continue to advocate for language and literacy education that is critical, creative, and affective, and that is consistently (re)designed to promote inclusion, belonging, solidarity-building, and the effective negotiation of difference as a productive resource. This, we understand, contributes to wholistic development of socially, culturally, and politically astute communities.
Some useful reading:
Govender, N., & Andrews, G. (2021). Queer critical literacies. In The handbook of critical literacies (pp. 82-93). Routledge.
Kneen, J., Chapman, S., Foley, J., Kelly, L., Smith, L., Thomas, H., and Watson, A. (2022) Teaching Key Stage 3 literature: the challenges of accountability, gender and diversity. Literacy, 56: 371–385. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12288.
Pickering, J., & van Leent, L. (2024). Teaching English and the Grammatical Use of the Pronoun: Queer (y) ing the Teaching of Writing. The Reading Teacher, 78(1), 37-45.
Santa María, L. (2024) Socialising feminism and diversity: the use of gender in young female readers’ literary attachments and exclusions. Literacy, 58: 312–321. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12377.
Schey, R. (2023). Literacy (Dis) Orientations in a Secondary Classroom: Possibilities and Limits of an Intersectional LGBTQ+‐Inclusive Curriculum. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(1), 25-43.
Scholes, L. (2017). Boys, masculinities and reading: Gender identity and literacy as social practice. Routledge.
Shrodes, A., Coyne, C., Chen, D., Macapagal, K., & Yuodsnukis, B. (2023). “I Want to Know What People are Saying”: Trans Youth Learning Critical Media Literacies to Negotiate Hate on Social Media. The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, 3(2), 141-159.
Stone, K., & Farrar, J. (2021). Advancing an LGBTI-inclusive curriculum in Scotland through critical literacy. Improving Schools, 24(2), 99-111.
A useful resource for professional development:
TIE Campaign. (2024). Digital Discourse Initiative CPD. Available: https://tie.scot/professional-learning/teachers/digital-discourse-initiative-cpd/
This E-Learning module provides teachers and school staff with an improved knowledge and understanding of how modern social media platforms work and their role in facilitating online disinformation and prejudicial content.
The content in this module will also be relevant for Community Learning and Development (CLD) staff across Scotland.
The module will provide you with tools, strategies, and considerations to respond to behaviours influenced by prejudicial content online and equip learners to become critical digital citizens.
By completing this course, you will have:
- a basic understanding of current digital architecture
- a detailed knowledge of extremist content online
- an awareness of evidence-based ‘Counter-Strategies’ and relevant considerations for schools
- strategies and tools for curriculum making
- information about available resources