2025/02/13 by C.A. Langerud, Madelaine Adelman, Daniel D. Liou · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
paper · doi:10.60808/v9kf-xj27
openalex publication_date 2025/02/13 · openalex created_date 2026/01/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
The purpose of this research is to use queer of color critique (QOCC) as an analytical framework to explore rural K-12 educators’ epistemic agency. The research focuses on educators’ engagement with a national initiative by an advocacy organization to distribute LGBTQ+ and racially diverse books to K-12 schools. The analysis centers on the educators’ praxis of epistemic agency against settled expectations associated with including queer and trans People of Color’s (QTPOC’s) stories in their schools. Our findings on educators’ epistemic agency center on three areas of knowledge and activity. First, educators demonstrate their ability to be aware of their local political context when navigating policies and decision-makers to create safe spaces and heterogeneous knowledge. Second, rural educators generate a range of curricular opportunities and activities despite structural constraints on their epistemic agency. Third, educators are agentive and resourceful in building epistemic communities of allies and co-conspirators. Overall, this research finds rural educators disrupting settled expectations of white rurality by engaging with the politics of knowledge, intersectionality, and (in)visibility.