Teacher Resource: Undoing Deficit Narratives about 2SLGBTQIA+ Youth

Educational research has a methodological history of framing student achievement gaps as a problem to be studied and analyzed (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Unfortunately, this research often frames marginalized students themselves as lacking, rather than questioning the structures within schools and the teaching practices that create and enforce stratification. Deficit narratives occur when marginalized students are framed as inherently being less able to succeed in schools. Black scholars in the United States have problematized such deficit narratives due to the ways in which teachers assume that Black students are lower achieving than their peers, often leading schools to stream Black students into special education at higher rates than their peers (Ladson-Billings, 1998). In Canada, this deficit framing is amplified  towards Indigenous students due to ongoing systemic racism and colonialism, where teachers’ low expectations of Indigenous students mean that these students are given fewer supports, encouraged to drop out of schools, and expelled at rates higher than their peers (Hampton & St. Denis, 2002). Educators tend to mark Indigenous students as damaged or limited by trauma, where they are rarely seen for their complex personhood as marked also by desire, agency and resistance (Tuck, 2009). Deficit narratives create self-fulfilling prophecies for marginalized children in schools, while educators and school systems reinforce their own internalized biases in the classroom.

An explosion of quantitative research on the schooling experiences of queer and trans youth has exposed prolific and alarming statistics about the rate of suicide, mental illness, drug use, and houselessness for queer youth (Taylor et al., 2011). This framing of queer and trans youth as at-risk is repeated in media representation (Cover, 2012; Mason, 2020). Educators then take up these statistics in a deficit framing of queer and trans lives as inherently difficult, resulting in queer and trans-specific educational policies across Canada. Current queer and trans-specific education modelling in schools tends to treat some students as a minority and at-risk class, with additional needs in relation to their peers (Airton, 2013). Policy tends to focus on a damage-centred narrative around high rates of bullying and suicide for queer youth, and these issues are then targeted with specific supports through a process that pathologizes individual youth. Belonging and affirmation for queer and trans youth becomes hyper-fixated around attempts to keep them safe and alive within unchanging harmful school and social structures, rather than around transforming whole school communities to be welcoming spaces. 

Although these new policies allow for certain supports for queer and trans students, they continue to function within gendered and heterosexist norms. For example, rather than reforming physical structures such as change rooms, or heteronormative curricula approaches to sexual education, youth identifying as trans are invited to “choose” the gendered spaces they wish to use or inhabit, and queerness is tended to as an after-thought add-in in sexual education. This accommodation approach to queer inclusion means that any sort of access to affirming spaces outside of a cis gender binary or heteronormative representation needs to be requested by students, families, or educators. Through the individualizing nature of school policies, the work of inclusion is redirected back down to those with the least access to affirmation in schools.

In a deficit model, the need for an accommodation is placed as a burden on the individual student (Thomas & Loxley, 2007). Rather than thinking about the ways in which buildings, language, representation, curriculum, and activities actively exclude and stratify students and then addressing such issues, deficit model policies require  marginalized students to self-identity as a perceived minority, and then request their own inclusion. This model of supports and accommodations continues to medicalize queerness and socially inscribe it on certain students and not others. This way of thinking has the potential to reproduce internalized homophobia and transphobia as students continue to view themselves as deviant or deficient, and outside of the norms and structures of everyday schooling. 

Many educators take up the thinking that queer and trans youth are a minority, and assume that youth are all straight and cisgendered until they declare themselves otherwise. This framing can prevent youth from self-identifying, as they are fearful that if they access any of the methods of inclusion, they will become permanently labeled as “other” within their community. The fear of negative reactions and discrimination from the dominant majority means that the assumed queer minority makes themselves even less visible in schools. Queer and trans youth also internalize this framing as being a burden on their teachers and families. They also learn that their inclusion is dependent on their teachers’ perception and willingness to provide them with accommodations.

Our own internalized beliefs about gender and sexuality impact the way that we think about queer and trans youth. For example, a cisgendered person has their gender affirmed by their peers multiple times an hour. A heterosexual teacher does not worry about disclosing a family story to their students. In Canadian society, we talk about gender and sexual orientation often, but because the gender binary and heterosexuality are normalized structures, they can sometimes seem invisible. In order to render these structures visible, educators can adopt a practice of self-questioning. Which students in our classrooms do we read as queer, and why? If a student asks us to use a different pronoun than the one we have assumed for them, do we automatically label them as trans? Does that increase their access to gender affirmation in the building? What are we doing to ensure our schools are welcoming places where queer and trans staff can express their identity and family make-up?

Once we recognize our own patterns of thinking around queer and trans youth, we can begin to implement structural changes in our schools and practices. Universal Design, a concept initially used in architectural planning and taken up in critical disability studies, leads us to rethink our spaces and how they welcome and obstruct certain bodies. A common example of Universal Design is a curb-cut out in the sidewalk, and how it benefits multiple people once implemented, not only those for whom it was designed. Gender affirming practices and welcoming spaces benefit all students, including cisgendered and heterosexual students. Many youth would like access to enhanced privacy when using the washroom or changing for physical education, regardless of their gender identity. We can think about our curricular stories, model texts, relational language, and classroom representations, and how they welcome people into the classroom. We can make sure that students feel welcomed and represented in all spaces in our buildings, not just in the inclusive space of the gay-straight alliance. Instead of assuming that queer and trans students have additional needs and that they will suffer in school settings, we can examine and transform our school settings to welcome all bodies into our spaces.