Voice Practices to Support LGBTQIA+ Educators and Pupils

Contribution to chapter 8 titled: 'Voice Practices to Support LGBTQIA+ Educators and Pupils' - in Sewell, A. (ed) Diverse voices in educational practice: A workbook for promoting pupil, parent and professional voice.

This chapter explores the implications of testimonial injustice in limiting the capacity of LGBTQIA+ educators, children, and young people as knowers and testifiers. Both LGBTQIA+ educators and pupils are subjected to this form of epistemic injustice. Testimony is a unique human experience; to speak our truth. We can view educational voice work as having undergone a process of initial theoretical understanding and practice embedding in the early twenty-first century, with the next developmental phase being a collected discussion of arising complexities and future-oriented solutions. Voice work and voice practices in educational contexts are arguably a nascent phenomenon. The development of meaningful voice practices will arguably only arise if educators take time to consider the role of classification by type and constructions of perceived social norms that voice practice activities may reinforce and/or create. The chapter concludes with some further considerations for the future of meaningful voice practices in educational contexts.