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This paper considers the feasibility and desirability of radical, critical pedagogies in teaching higher education students about "sensitive" topics with children, sexualities, and schooling used as an example to explore this. Reflecting on early career research-led teaching, I confront anxieties informing decisions about "what" and "how" to teach children's geographies of sexualities in light of student and institutional expectations and evaluations, and in relation to how colleagues have taught. Scrutinising my pedagogy with respect to what could have been more evocative teaching and uncomfortable learning, I question the extent to which I achieved the radical and critical potential I foresaw in introducing teaching on children and sexualities; teaching which -- alongside student and institutional expectations and evaluations -- has been informed through broader social norms of acceptability and permissibility, and contemporary imperatives for knowledge to be "relevant" and "useful". In gesturing toward more challenging teaching, I consider the appropriateness of trigger/content "warnings" and explore "speakability" (after Monk) as a strategy for approaching "sensitive" topics, including age of consent. As an alternative to trigger/content warnings, I explore principles of content previews/ forecasts when broaching "sensitive" topics while remaining critical of what constitutes "sensitive" topics/content throughout.

The notion of inclusive education has multiple meanings and the precise definition remains contested. In particular, the debate rages as to whether it is appropriate for some schools to offer specialised provision to particular cohorts of students rather than to educate everyone within a common school. This manuscript foregrounds rich empirical data from students, parents and educators at Pride School Atlanta, described as 'the South's first school for LGBTQ students', a new small, democratic, private school with the explicit intention of creating a 'thriving space' for 'gay, straight, queer, gender-queer' children, young people and families; a space that moves 'beyond safety'. By drawing on Dyson's [2012. "Inclusion and Inclusions: Theories and Discourses in Inclusive Education." In "World Yearbook of Education 1999: Inclusive Education," edited by H. Daniels and P. Garner. Oxon: Routledge] work on 'inclusions' and moving away from the simple binary of what is inclusive/exclusive, this manuscript addresses the question of whether a school, which offers specialised provision to a small group of students, can play a role in inclusive education. It argues that this model of schooling, described by one student as 'a whole new thing' offers opportunities for presence, participation and achievement, recognition and achievement.

This article explores the growing interest in schools which are aimed at children and young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ), schools described as LGBTQ-affirming. Schools which target specific groups of students are sometimes viewed as being anti-inclusive because they assign labels to students and separate them from one another. This is based on a notion of inclusive education as a single 'school for all'; a comprehensive, common school which is suitable for all children in a particular locality. Using academic literature alongside original data from an in-depth qualitative case study of an LGBTQ-affirming school in Atlanta, this article addresses the question of whether there is a place for LGBTQ-affirming schools within inclusive education systems. It argues that the word 'segregated' is not an accurate description of these schools, positing that segregated spaces are not the same as separate spaces. It argues that the separateness of LGBTQ-affirming schools is important to their role in inclusive education, specifically when they are positioned as examples of Foucault's heterotopias. Viewing them through this theoretical lens enables them to be seen as 'other spaces', as a form of 'resistance' and 'protest' which may 'unstitch' the utopian vision of inclusive education.

Against a backdrop of increasing cultural visibility of people who identify across, between or beyond the categories of male and female, young people have been positioned within the wider social imaginary as radical trailblazers for a new, progressive gender order. This paper provides original insights that empirically ground and interrogate such claims. Drawing on findings from focus group interviews held with 136 young people (aged 16–24) in the UK, the paper demonstrates how young people's understandings and narrations of gender diversity both support and contest linear progress narratives. We show how young people position their acceptance of gender diversity in contradistinction to older generations. However, this narrative of generational progress was undermined and complicated by tensions and ambiguities within young people's talk. Our findings suggest that, alongside being accepting of gender diversity, young people also experience confusion and misunderstanding which may mean that they are more comfortable with stable and binary forms of gender diversity. Moreover, some young people express ideological resistance to gender diversity, informed by wider debates around 'identity politics'. Overall, we stress the importance of situating young people's gender talk amidst multiple discursive constellations through which increasingly politicised struggles around the meanings of 'gender' are currently playing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the feasibility and desirability of radical, critical pedagogies in teaching higher education students about "sensitive" topics with children, sexualities, and schooling used as an example to explore this. Reflecting on early career research-led teaching, I confront anxieties informing decisions about what and how to teach children's geographies of sexualities in light of student and institutional expectations and evaluations, and in relation to how colleagues have taught. Scrutinising my pedagogy with respect to what could have been more evocative teaching and uncomfortable learning, I question the extent to which I achieved the radical and critical potential I foresaw in introducing teaching on children and sexualities; teaching which – alongside student and institutional expectations and evaluations – has been informed through broader social norms of acceptability and permissibility, and contemporary imperatives for knowledge to be "relevant" and "useful". In gesturing toward more challenging teaching, I consider the appropriateness of trigger/content "warnings" and explore speakability (after Monk) as a strategy for approaching "sensitive" topics, including age of consent. As an alternative to trigger/content warnings, I explore principles of content previews/ forecasts when broaching "sensitive" topics while remaining critical of what constitutes "sensitive" topics/content throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses children's (6–11 year olds) contradictory, socio-spatial responses to 'gender and sexualities education' in English primary schools. Drawing on ethnographic, interview and focus group data from an 18-month study, the paper foregrounds 'formal' and 'informal' spaces of learning in order to illustrate how children's gendered and sexualised subjectivities are both constituted within – and constitutive of – the spatialities of schooling. Utilising subjectivity and performativity theory after Butler, a 'good student' that performs 'acceptance' of liberal discourses of gender and sexual diversity in classrooms is distinguished from a 'good peer' that is simultaneously compelled to reinstate (hetero)gender/sexuality in the playground, toilets and corridors. These contradictory sociospatial stances, which came to the fore in focus groups that defy 'formal' or 'informal' categorisation challenge gender and sexualities education centred on equalities and anti-bullying. Findings from this study point to the urgent need to acknowledge and counter the dominance of wider heteronormative ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]