Rethinking School Spaces for Transgender, Non-binary, and Gender Diverse Youth: Trans-ing the School Washroom

This text examines how school policies and practices around bathrooms fail to dismantle cisnormativity and recognize trans lives,and proposes a trans-centred epistemology to re-think school spaces. It provides a critical media and policy analysis of how trans and gender-diverse students are de-limited,erased,or harmed,and offers new justifications for critical trans-informed policies and practices in education that recognize and center trans and gender-diverse knowledges,expressions,and experiences.

Format: Hardback
Length: 220 pages
Publication date: 21 June 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This text explores the washroom as an onto-epistemological site, shedding light on how school spaces shape the experiences, normalization, and understanding of gender among youth. It highlights the shortcomings of current school policies and practices in dismantling cisnormativity and recognizing the lives of trans individuals. Through a combination of media-policy analysis, empirical study, and arts-based methodologies, the text advocates for a re-thinking of school spaces through a trans-centred epistemology. It examines how trans and gender-diverse students are limited, erased, or harmed within these spaces and offers a critical analysis of media and policy practices.

The analysis draws from the theoretical framework of heterotopia and critical trans-ing to inform the data analysis. It provides a comprehensive media and policy analysis of the challenges faced by trans and gender-diverse students. Empirical data from a school bathroom project, including student photographs and visual expressions of gender diversity, support the position advocated in the text.

The combination of media-policy analysis, empirical study, and archival online material provides new justifications for critical trans-informed policies and practices in education. The text makes a unique and timely contribution to the debate on gender-inclusive bathrooms and trans rights to self-identification. It appeals to scholars, postgraduates, educators, and faculty working in the area of gender and sexuality in education, with interests in trans phenomena.

Weight: 600g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367435738