Recognition, responsibility, and risk: Pre-service teachers' framing and reframing of lesbian, gay, and bisexual social justice issues

This paper presumes teachers play crucial roles in making more just societies and teacher educators must decide how they will participate in and/or shape a global dialog about LGB rights with pre-service teachers. This paper utilizes Fraser's theory of justice to consider curricular change. It examines the values and experiences pre-service teachers bring to their university education that shape their interaction with curricula. Analysis of classroom dialog suggests that pre-service teachers have a more complex understanding of structure and transformation than their nascent language around sexuality allows them to articulate. These optimistic findings lead to proposals for transforming how we teach about sexuality.

► We develop a matrix of social justice drawing on Nancy Fraser. ► We find struggle to view sexuality through a social justice lens. ► Students note the risks and structures that contain teaching. ► Students need help contextualizing LGBT issues in diversity education.