LGBTIQ+ Teachers in Australia
The key themes that inform research with LGBTIQ+ teachers in Australia are heteronormativity in the workplace, policy, context, and the negotiation of private and professional worlds. There is a paucity of work that focuses solely on an Australian context; therefore, it is necessary to link the Australian themes to broader international themes from the field. Research carried out into the lives of LGBTIQ+ teachers in Australia is part of a small but growing field of international work that engages with LGBTIQ+ teacher identities, both in their personal and professional lives. LGBTIQ+ is an acronym that refers to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and/or queer. The “+” acknowledges that there may be other categories of gender and sexual identification that are not included here, and also acknowledges that gender and sexual identities are shifting and may be subject to change during the duration of a person’s life. LGBTIQ+ has been chosen as a preferred acronym in the article because of its inclusiveness and acknowledgment of physical sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression. When referring specifically to the experiences of transgender educators, “trans*” is used, a broad term for people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth and which includes people identifying as transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender creative. The term “cisgender” or “cis” is used to denote people whose sex assigned at birth reflects their gender identity.