The idea for this edited book began in Helsinki in 2018 where the editors participated on a panel at an educational conference discussing heteronormativity and schooling. A key thread in the research presentations was the frustrations and difficulty many teachers felt in broaching the teaching of counter normative gender and sexualities in the classroom or intervening to stop homophobic and transphobic bullying and harassment. In fact the corpus of international research resonates this frustrations and tells how teachers and school managers need opportunities for professional development on how they respond to issues of sexuality and gender diversity (Baruch-Dominguez, Infante-Xibille, & Saloma-Zuñiga, 2016; Carrara, Nascimento, Duque, & Tramontano, 2016; Francis et al., 2018; Kjaran & Lehtonen, 2017; Smith, 2018; UNESCO, 2016). Scholars researching the field of gender, sexuality, and schooling contend that in some school contexts heterosexist prejudice and discrimination results from attitudes and behaviors by peers, teachers, and school managers which contribute to the vulnerability, victimization, and social isolation of queer youth (Abbott, Ellis, & Abbott, 2015; Baruch-Dominguez et al., 2016; DePalma & Atkinson, 2009; Francis, 2017; Francis & Brown, 2017). Moreover, research shows that schools are ill-equipped (Allen, 2019; Bhana, 2012, 2014; Ferfolja, 2007; Francis, 2016; Francis & DePalma, 2015; Kjaran & Lehtonen, 2017; Rasmussen, Sanjakdar, Allen, Quinlivan, & Bromdal, 2017) and community organizations resourceful in their curriculum and pedagogical approaches (Chipatiso & Richardson, 2011; Francis, 2019; Hoosain Khan, 2013, 2014; Lehtonen, 2017).

Building on our own activist orientations with marginalized communities and outreach work in schools (Francis, 2010, 2013; Francis & Francis, 2006; Francis & Reygan, 2016; Kjaran & Jóhannesson, 2017; Kjaran, Francis, & Hauksson, 2019; Lehtonen, 2012, 2014, 2017), our edited book questions what if we explored solutions outside of schools with the hope of creating new insights to advancing the teaching and learning of gender and sexuality diversity in schools. What is the synergistic potential of the outreach work of queer social movements and schools and is there a mutually influential relationship between the two? By examining a range of cases from a diversity of country contexts which draw on various theoretical and methodological approaches, our edited book aims to contribute to a scholarly conversation about how queer social movements and schools connect. In doing this, the contributing authors trouble heteronormativity in educational contexts and at the same time highlight what is available in terms of queer resistance, activism, and advocacy. The time is ripe for research to focus on and explore teaching, support, and activism that challenge heteronormativity from beyond and outside the school gates.

In this book, we focus on the educational outreach work done by civil society organizations, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) human rights organizations, in and with schools. We acknowledge that these same organizations have been active in changing educational policies and legislation to prevent discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression also within educational institutions as well as influencing schools and education system by their general advocacy work, media campaigns, research projects on education, instructional material production, and cooperation with other nongovernmental organizations working with schools.

Many of the contributing authors argue that content knowledge related to gender and sexuality diversity is either hidden in curricular policies and teaching or not broached at all. They show how queer social movements can only have limited effects when they work outside the formalized school curriculum. Also highlighted is how activist organizations have begun to develop resources to address existing gaps in the policy framework for teaching related to gender and sexual diversity. Troublingly, all the chapters highlight the hindrances, challenges, tensions, and contradictions implicit in connecting the outreach work of queer social movements with teaching, learning, and support in schools. What is consistent across the chapters, is the call and need for schools and queer social movements to build alliances to address the gap in educational policies and the teaching of gender and sexuality diversity.

The contributions in this edited book are from a number of countries which vary significantly in legislation and attitudes. For example, in Iran, same-sex sexual acts are still punishable by death. In Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, same-sex sexualities are illegal and, in some instances, also criminalized. Such legislation conjointly with religion and cultural heteronormativity determine educators’ attitudes which shape the process of teaching, learning, and support in schools. Despite positive changes in countries such as Botswana and Taiwan, teachers who challenge normalization are often regulated and silenced (see Yang, Chapter 4 and Reygan, Chapter 9). In Canada (see Schmitt, Chapter 3), Denmark, Finland and Iceland (Kjaran and Lehtonen, Chapter 2), Spain (DePalma, Chapter 6) and South Africa (see Francis and Khan, Chapter 11)—countries seen as progressive and leading the way on various issues related to the rights and inclusion of LGBTIQ individuals—the social realities are not necessarily better. Despite the progressive legislative shifts regarding gender and sexual equality in these countries, there remains discrepancy between policy and practice concerning LGBTIQ rights and attitudes within education, keeping the power of heterosexuality intact.

At the same time, the post-gay image drawn up in some parts of the world tacitly implies that we don’t need queer activism and advocacy anymore. The Nordic countries within Europe, for example, in being depicted as queer utopias are seen as beacons of LGBTIQ rights. However, some caution is advised in the tendency to cast these cultural contexts in idealized and romanticized terms, and describing them as a paradise for sexual minorities. It can also be argued, that depicting them as a queer utopia for sexual and gender minorities is in some ways a contradiction, as queer and queering can be seen as an antithesis to utopic thought. Furthermore, any notion of a utopia, for example in respect to sexual and/or gender minorities, has the tendency to include certain subjects while at the same time it excludes others, even rendering them as sexual and gendered abjects. Duggan has argued that these “utopic” transformations of LGBTIQ rights, which are mostly focused on marriage equality, have resulted in “public recognition of domesticated, depoliticized privacy” for some non-heterosexual subjects (Duggan, 2003, p. 65). In other words, these changes have, to a certain degree extended the limits of heteronormativity, including some privileged groups within the LGBTIQ spectrum, by making homosexuality, practiced within the grids of heteronormativity, more acceptable vis á vis heteronormative society. In other words, granting civil rights to sexual and gender minorities speaks, on the one hand, to utopian progressive thought, framed within the human rights discourse, but also sustains and produces homonormativity, in which some members of the LGBTIQ family seek compliance and inclusion within the heteronormative framework. Furthermore, there is still a gap between a progressive society in terms of sexual rights and gender equality, on the one hand, and more conservative schools, on the other hand, particularly in terms of the implementation of LGBTIQ policies in the classroom and educational context. Thus, institutionalized heterosexism and heteronormativity are still (re)produced and sustained within the educational context, despite progressive policies in terms of gender and sexual equality, and a strong legal and human rights history.

The contributors, concerned with the oppression of counter normative gender and sexualities, foreground heteronormative harassment as accepted parts of schooling where teachers and school managers, in most instances, do not intervene to stop bullying and marginalization. In doing so, they emphasize schools as sites of regulation that restrict gender and sexual expression and at the same time highlighting queer social movements as a powerful resource for social awareness and change. While hi...