Foreword by Gillian Klein

108 pages
ISBN: 978 1 85856 440 1
A4 Landscape
February 2010

This book is a celebration of recognition, affirmation and inclusion. Primary teachers tell the story of how they have challenged the taken-for-granted norms and silences in primary schools around sexual orientation and gender expression. These norms and silences have left lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families marginalised, unrepresented and subject to multiple discrimination, and have allowed embedded homophobia and transphobia to go largely unchallenged. Through their accounts of practice, reflections and interpretations, vignettes and images, the teachers describe how they have challenged this unaddressed area of inclusion across sites across England ranging from a tiny village church school to urban and surburban settings. Working within and beyond the curriculum, teachers have broken boundaries in primary practice for sexualities and gender equality.

All the teachers who contributed to this book are members of the No Outsiders project team, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Their work over 2006 to 2008 has made worldwide news and attracted the attention of practitioners and policy makers across the UK at local and national level. In this book they show how it is not only through planned innovations and policy developments that change happens but also, and crucially, in the day-to-day moments where new thinking leads to new action for equality and social justice.

With its thought-provoking examples of practice, lists of resources and examples of children's work, this is an essential book for enhancing practice, and completes the No Outsiders Project trilogy that began with Invisible Boundaries and Interrogating Heteronormativity in Primary Schools.