Philosophy for Children: Challenging Sexual and Gender Essentialism Through Pedagogical Advocacy

• Author / Creator

  Hankey, Jeffrey R

• School-based bullying is a pervasive issue in Canada, resulting in deplorable physical and psychological outcomes for victims, bullies and bystanders. Sexual and gender minority youth—and anyone perceived to embody variant sexual and gender norms—are especially at risk of abuse. I present evidence to suggest that a community of inquiry such as Philosophy for Children (P4C) has potential to improve the situation; P4C works to collapse sexual and gender dualisms and reconstruct gender epistemologies, providing young learners with a space to discover, together, that sexuality and gender are intricate and multivariate by nature and construction. This manuscript presents a multi-perspective theoretical analysis. It is used to frame P4C by drawing on queer, critical and postmodern theorizing to build pedagogy that addresses ethical concerns around the program while buttressing my central hypothesis that P4C, as pedagogical advocacy, can help prevent homophobic and transphobic bullying.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Advocacy
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Philosophy for Children
  • Postmodernism
  • Anti-bullying
  • Community of inquiry
  • Queer pedagogy

• Graduation date

  Spring 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Education

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3DV1CW8N

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.