From performed to performing ethnography: translating life history research into anti‐homophobia curriculum for a teacher education program

Abstract

This paper documents the translation of a performed ethnography into an anti‐homophobia curriculum activity for teacher education students. The performed ethnography, called Wearing The Secret Out, is based on the life histories of eight physical education teachers who identified as “lesbian”, “gay” and “queer”. Pedagogically, Wearing The Secret Out contains a montage of stories that require the audience to make their own meanings about how to approach anti‐homophobia teaching. Teacher education students enrolled in an anti‐homophobia course (known as a “subject” or “unit” in Australia) called Inqueeries About Education viewed the performance. They then read a complete transcript of the life history interview with one of the teachers featured in the performance. Students then created and performed their own “mini‐ethnographies” based on the interview transcript as a way of constructing their own meanings. The paper discusses how moving from performed to performing ethnography contributes to anti‐homophobia pedagogy by examining our experiences instructing the course, a videotape of the students' performances, a script from one of the students' performances and a set of “free‐writes” (LeCompte and Preissle, 1993 LeCompte M Preissle J Tesch R (1993) Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research San Diego, CA: Academic Press [Google Scholar], p. 165) written by the students in the course.

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