How Teacher Education Mundanely Yet Profoundly Fails Transgender and/or Gender Nonconforming Candidates

Abstract

In this commentary, the authors show that teacher education’s mundane—ordinary and unremarkable—demands of all teacher candidates may require transgender and/or gender nonconforming candidates to harm themselves through “non-decisions”: acts of harm to one’s self that would be unthinkable as explicit requests from program faculty or staff, but that these candidates nevertheless undertake, driven to believe they are necessary to become a teacher. The included non-decision examples all link in some way with invocations of “professionalism” in the daily life of teacher education programs.