Wayne Martino

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Western University

This paper is based on research that is concerned to provide insight into the pedagogical potential for interrupting heteronormativity and addressing the politics of gender expression/embodiment in the elementary school classroom. It is informed by an engagement with queer and trans theoretical literature that raises questions about restrictive soc...

In this paper, we draw on conversations with two English teachers in an Australian government speciality arts focused school to investigate possibilities for envisaging trans-affirmative and queer pedagogies in the classroom. It draws from two studies that are concerned to investigate how gender and sexually diverse students are being supported in...

In this paper we draw on Mettler’s concept of the policyscape and apply it to an examination of policy-making processes and events as they pertain specifically to an analysis of transgender inclusivity and gender diversity in the Ontario context. We employ Ball’s focus on policy as text and policy ensembles alongside Bailey’s employment of policy d...

In this article, we provide theoretically informed empirical insights into administrative and pedagogical approaches to supporting transgender students in schools which rely on a fundamental rationality of individualisation and rights. We draw on trans epistemological frameworks and political theories that address the limits of liberal individualis...

In this paper, we reflect on the ethico-political and epistemological implications of a critical trans pedagogy that takes as its focus the generative stance of refusal. Our purpose is to identify and explain the significance of key axiomatic principles at the heart of our conception of such a pedagogical endeavour, which entails an interrogative s...

This report details the findings of an Ontario-wide survey of 1194 school educators' knowledge of and experience with trans-affirming policy and practice. The survey was developed in consultation with trans educators, school board officials, and community members and included a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions. Key findings revealed th...

Background/Context In Ontario, and Canada more broadly, anti-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression is enshrined in the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which have required schools to address trans inclusion. However, the ways in which educators understand or enact these polici...

Context/Background This article provides an introduction to the special issue. It includes an overview of a collection of articles from scholars across the globe who are committed to deepening an understanding of the experiences of trans students and gender-expansive education in schools. The special issue grew out of concerns about the need to inv...

Background/Context Trans studies provides onto-epistemological, theoretical, ethical, and political frameworks that have a particular application for studies in education, and specifically for educators in schools, that remains largely unexplored or unelaborated. Within a context of resurgent right-wing extremism that fuels anti-trans and white sup...

In this paper, we examine the educative significance of YouTube as a space of self-expression for transgender and non-binary youth without being hindered by pervasive cisnormative and cisgenderist expectations that are institutionalised and sanctioned in the education system. We employ transgender studies informed epistemological frameworks to inve...

In this chapter, the authors reflect on the epistemological significance of transgender studies in the academy as an emerging and growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship that is committed to what Stryker has termed a politics of (de)subjugated knowledges. They focus on some important research by trans and non‐binary scholars, such as Nicolaz...

In this article, we conduct a policy analysis of transgender affirmative policies in Ontario and examine their implications for addressing gender justice and gender democratization in the school system. By adopting a case study approach, we provide a critical analysis of these policies and of how stakeholders with familiarity and knowledge of trans...

Disavowal and regulation of sexual minorities will be explored by engaging with important historical sources and accounts that speak to the historical contingencies of the emergence of same-sex desire and the category of “the homosexual” in Iran. Incorporated into this account is the political and social history of Iran from the latter part of the...

In this article we examine accounts of self-identifying Iranian gay men. We draw on a range of evidentiary sources—interpretive, historical, online, and empirical—to generate critical and nuanced insights into the politics of recognition and representation that inform narrative accounts of the lived experiences of self-identified gay Iranian men, a...

In this paper, our purpose is to investigate policy informing texts and discourses referencing transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system. Drawing on scholarship from transgender, queer and policy studies, we highlight the interplay of progressive and conservative forces affecting the Western Australian edu...

Examining the voices of English teachers regarding the extent to which Australian high schools are providing inclusive environments, this paper aims to generate deeper understandings about countering cisnormativity and heteronormativity. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in Western Australia, the theoretical framework meshes the lenses of Ba...

This article is based on an ethnographic study that is concerned to provide empirical insights into queer Iranian men’s lives in Iran, and specifically in Tehran. It was conceived in response to concerns about accounts provided by gay internationalist framings of the queer Iranian subject as reducible to a meta-narrative of homophobic persecution a...

This report emerged from a "Young and Well" CRC collaboration. The report discusses and offers teacher resources in relation to four themes: school climate; teacher identities; curriculum; multiliteracies.

This paper retrospectively examines a collection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* (LGBT)-themed books discussed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) and ally students and teachers across 3 years of an out-of-school reading group. Through a textual content analysis of a sub-set of these books, we examine what queer...

In this paper, we draw attention to the impact of neoliberal globalisation in rearticulating conceptions of equity within the Ontario context. The Ontario education system has been hailed for its top performance on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a high-equity/high-quality education system and created ‘PISA envy’ in the int...

In this chapter the author deploys the concept of the transgender imaginary, building on Mills’s notion of the sociological imagination and Taylor’s notion of the social imaginary, to reflect on some of the limits of queer theory in terms of its pedagogical and epistemological implications for addressing the narrative significance of transsexual em...

Globalizing Educational Accountabilities analyzes the influence that international and national testing and accountability regimes have on educational policy reform efforts in schooling systems around the world. Tracing the evolution of those regimes, with an emphasis on the OECD’s PISA, it reveals the multiple effects of policy as numbers in count...

This article provides a critical analysis of the political significance of role modelling as it relates to envisaging a critical multicultural approach to educational reform. While not rejecting role modelling outright, it calls for a commitment to questioning the limits of common sense understandings that underpin the logic of gender and racial af...

In this chapter we draw attention to the invisibility of race and antiracism in Ontario’s education system by focusing on the Ontario government’s inclusivity and anti-bullying policies in the context of larger neoliberal strategies (Martino & Rezai-Rashti, 2012, 2013). Drawing on the work of policy sociologists (Ball, 2006; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010;...

In this article, we deal with the politics of gender embodiment and the significance of queer sociological and transgender theoretical perspectives for reflecting on the pedagogical implications of employing texts such as “My princess boy” to address questions pertaining to the livability and recognizability of differently gendered identities in th...

Abstract „Das Verhältnis zwischen Jungen, Lehrkräften und Erziehung“

In this chapter, I focus on the policy implications of male teacher shortage and recruitment in terms of addressing fundamental equity issues in the teaching profession. These equity issues have been highlighted in response to the question of male teacher shortage and continue to provoke considerable debate, as I will illustrate in this chapter wit...

In this paper, we investigate primary school teachers’ reflections on addressing the topic of same-sex families and relationships in their classrooms. Informed by queer theoretical and Foucauldian analytic approaches, we examine teachers’ potential use of texts, such as picture storybooks, which introduce representations of same-sex relationships a...

Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education showcases scholarly work over a wide range of educational topics, contexts and locations within gender and sexuality in education. The series welcomes theoretically informed scholarship including critical, feminist, queer, trans, postcolonial, and intersectional perspectives, and encourages crea...

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this ‘gap talk’ is inextricably...

This paper focuses on outlining, contextualising and theorising the rise of global and complementary national modes of test-based, top-down accountability in schooling systems. The effects of these infrastructures of accountability on schools, teachers’ pedagogical work, on the width of curriculum and on the goals of schooling are also alluded to....

This introductory paper discusses the methodological and political significance of the processes of gendering in conducting qualitative research on gender and education. It stresses the need to reject epistemological innocence and to be critically reflexive about gendering across all stages of the research process. The significant influence of the...

In this paper, we draw on pro-feminist, anti-essentialist espistemological and theoretical frameworks, in conjunction with adopting autoethnographic narratives, both to provide critical insight into and contextualize the particular testimony and witnessing of our own personal involvement in the gendering of a government-commissioned research projec...

This essay provides a review of a resource guide written by Kristopher Wells, Gayle Roberts, and Carol Allan (2012) titled Supporting Transgender and Transsexual Students in K–12 Schools: A Guide for Educators. The guide is an invaluable resource for educators in schools and teacher education programs.

I completed my M.Ed. in the early 1990s in Western Australia at a time just prior to what Marcus Weaver-Hightower (2003) has identified as the “boy turn” in the field of gender and education. For example, in Australia, since the 1970s there had been a significant focus on and state engagement with gender equity, with specific attention directed to...

In this chapter, I draw on queer theory to make sense of one prospective male teacher’s commitment to queering heterosexuality. The focus is on examining the motivations behind this teacher candidate’s commitment to queering masculinity and his straight teacher identity. The implications of this case study for queering masculinities in male teacher...

In this paper, we provide a particular critique of policy-making processes related to addressing the gender achievement gap in the Ontario context. The focus is on tracing the effects of a neoliberal regime of accountability in terms of the designation of boys as a disadvantaged group alongside other minority groups who have historically faced syst...

In this chapter, I examine the necessary and important role that male teachers can play in boys’ lives in school, particularly with regards to interrupting hegemonic masculinity and in their capacity to function as ‘role models’. This analysis is set against a critique of dominant discourses about the call for male teachers as role models for boys...

This book provides an illuminating account of teachers' own reflections on their experiences of teaching in urban schools. It was conceived as a direct response to policy-related and media-generated concerns about male teacher shortage and offers a critique of the call for more male role models in elementary schools to address important issues rega...

In this article we draw on queer theoretical and critical literacy perspectives to investigate elementary school teachers' pedagogical approaches to addressing same- sex parenting and non-normative sexuality in the elementary classroom. Through undertaking case study research, we examine two Australian elementary school teachers' reflections on usi...

In this article we draw on queer theoretical and critical literacy perspectives to investigate elementary school teachers' pedagogical approaches to addressing same‐ sex parenting and non‐normative sexuality in the elementary classroom. Through undertaking case study research, we examine two Australian elementary school teachers' reflections on usi...

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role mode...

This article reports on research with one Black male elementary school teacher in Toronto and draws on feminist, queer, and antiracist analytic perspectives to raise important questions about the discourse of teachers as role models. The voice of this teacher is used to challenge discourses about role modeling in their capacity to address adequatel...

In this chapter I focus on the discourse of teachers as role models to highlight the conceptual limits of such an explanatory framework for making sense of teachers' lives and their impact on student learning in schools. I stress that the issues sur rounding the call for role models in terms of recruiting more minority and male teachers in schools...

As noted in Chapter 1, there is now a globalized educational discourse about ‘failing boys’ circulating in the privileged nations of the global north — what Marcus Weaver-Hightower (2003a) has called the ‘boy turn’ in gender policies in schooling and in associated politics and theorizing. Weaver-Hightower uses the evocative concept ‘boy turn’ to en...

Since the early 1990s through to this moment, in the nations of the global north issues on boys’ education have been placed firmly on the policy agenda, as well as exercising the minds of many practitioners and parents. Such concerns have not been restricted to these nations (see, for example, Jha and Kelleher, 2006), despite the clear issues for g...

Hallsview Public School of 950 students is a primary or elementary school which not only draws on a middle- to lower-middle-class population, but also has a significant number of students from economically dis­advantaged families. While the students are mainly from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, there are a number of students from South Asian com­muniti...

Cathcart State High School is a co-educational government school situated in a beachside suburb of a regional Australian city. The school draws from a broad demographic. There are a number of wealthy estab­lished family groupings living in the area. However, the beach economy also draws on a number of transient families in search of better lifestyl...

Cave Street Primary is a government school with about 24 teachers, 5 of these being male. The principal and one deputy principal of the school are male and there is another female deputy. In the staff common room there is a long table, often covered in various pieces of literature from the department of education. There is also a small group of arm...

Previous chapters have demonstrated that structural reforms in boys’ education have been limited by their tendency to reinforce essentialist understandings of boys and masculinities. We have also demonstrated how such initiatives have failed to engage with research-based under­standings about boys, which draw attention to the significance of the so...

The issue of boys and schooling has acquired significant exposure in a range of nations across the globe. Responses to this issue have taken a number of forms in these various locations. However, common in many of the most strident calls to action in terms of boys’ educa­tion has been the claim that contemporary schooling has failed boys. In this b...

Exploring current approaches to addressing boys' education in schools, this book highlights the limitations of structural reform initiatives and the failure to address the impact of socioeconomic status, race, sexuality, disability and hegemonic masculinity on both boys' and girls' participation in schooling. © Bob Lingard, Wayne Martino and Martin...

This paper is based on an investigation into the dynamics of masculinity in two male elementary school teachers' lives. It draws on a poststructuralist approach to empirical analysis that is informed by Sondergaard who argues for the need to attend to the 'constitution of social practices and cultural patterns' through which subjects make sense of...

This paper draws on feminist, postcolonial and queer analytic frameworks to address the pedagogical significance of veiling and the Muslim subject in the aftermath of September 11. It addresses questions related to the knowledge and analytic frameworks needed to engage pedagogically with a politics of difference vis-à-vis the gendered body and prac...

This article focuses on the call for more male teachers as role models in elementary schools and treats it as a manifestation of “recuperative masculinity politics” (Lingard & Douglas, 1999). Attention is drawn to the problematic gap between neo-liberal educational policy–related discussions about male teacher shortage in elementary schools and res...

This chapter draws on research into the influence of masculinities on male students who are training to be English teachers. I am interested in examining how issues of masculinity impact on their developing identities and pedagogical practices as English teachers, given the perception of English as a specific gendered curriculum domain and, hence,...

This article reports on research funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate school responses to gender equity. It addresses the efforts of a disadvantaged school to tackle what they perceived to be gender inequalities, but in the process of constructing a top-set and bottom-set/stream class they are developing new forms of old inequal...