Unmanageable Subjects: Trans Childhoods and the Struggle for Self-Determination at School

In the midst of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation banning early elementary school teachers from discussing gender and sexuality with their students, the United States is embroiled in controversy over the meaning of gender in civic life and education. In this presentation, I argue that trans people are positioned as unmanageable subjects within the context of K-12 schools in the United States. How might educators embrace unmanageability? What might it look like to practice civic education that resists rigidly scripting the world, including who children are allowed to be and become within it?

ISLS Annual Meeting 2023

This year’s Annual Meeting once again brings together the Learning Sciences community as a whole by combining its two conference programs, the Learning Sciences (ICLS) and Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). These two programs are unified by the theme of “Building Knowledge and Sustaining our Community”. Responding to our three year series of remote, virtual conferences, we aim to revisit the retreat experience of in-person programs. We recognize the value of in-person presentations, learning, networking, mentoring, seeking to revisit (or rediscover) this mode to remember what it is that we had lost.