Male teachers, homophobia, misogyny and teacher education

Placing issues of homophobia and anti-lesbianism on the agenda of teacher education programmes often meets with resistance from some students, and others. Such resistance is indicative of broader attempts to maintain the straight face of schooling. However, one way in which it is possible to place such issues on the agenda in schooling and teacher education is to demonstrate how these discourses impact upon all students and teachers. A current opening for raising such matters within teacher education programmes is the problematisation of the calls for more male teachers, calls that are becoming pervasive in many Western education systems. Within the drives to attract more male teachers to the profession there is usually a silence relating to the ways in which homophobia and its counterpart, misogyny, work to construct normalised notions of teachers. This paper examines the ways in which these silences perpetuate existing gender regimes in schools to the detriment of female teachers, girls, and marginalised male teachers and boys. It then suggests that teacher education programmes use this topic to demonstrate the impact of homophobia and misogyny on all involved in education.