Conference Program

Contemporary discussions on democratic education emphasize classroom practices that foster dialogue and active participation in shared processes. From the perspective of critical pedagogy, education is understood not merely as the trasmission of knowledge, but as a social and political practice through which learners engage with questions of power, representation, and justice (Freire, 1970; hooks, 2014; Giroux, 2020). In English Language Teaching (ELT), literary texts frequently serve as sites where cultural knowledge is introduced and negotiated. Yet classroom materials often reproduce normative representations of gender, family, and identity. While research on critical and inclusive language pedagogy has expanded, sexuality and gender continue to be marginalized in primary education. As a result, heteronormative assumptions continue to shape what counts as legitimate cultural knowledge and whose experiences become visible within classroom discussions.

This contribution presents findings from a qualitative classroom intervention conducted in two fifth-grade English classes in Norway, involving thirty puoils. The intervention explored how queer children's literature and arts-based literacy practices might support more inclusive and participatory forms of classroom dialogue. The teachng sequence centered on the graphic novel series The Tea Dragon Society (O'Neill, 2017, 2019, 2021, which portrays a fictional community characterized by diverse identities, abilities, and relational practices. Through shared reading, discussions, and creative responses, pupils engaged with the narrative by producing drawings, poems, and sculptures that interpreted the characters, their relationships, and stories. The dataset includes recordings of classroom discussions, photographs and scans of student artwork, field notes, and short interviews with five participants.

Drawing on queer pedagogy and intersectional perspectives on knowledge and power (Crenshaw, 1989), the study approaches literary engagement as a potential site of epistemic justice in language education. From a decolonial perspective, queering classroom texts and interpretive practices can disrupt dominant knowledge hierarchies that privilege normative narratives of identity, belonging, and social relations, opening space for alternative ways of understanding community and difference. Such an approach resonates with broader conceptions of democratic education that emphasize encounters with plurality within shared educational spaces (Biesta, 2020). The analysis show that arts-based literacy activities can create interpretative spaces in which the pupils collaboratively explored the subject and engaged with the narrative. Multimodal responses provided multiple entry points into literary engagement and language use.

Arts-based literacy activities created interpretative spaces in which pupils collaboratively explored and engaged with the narrative. Multimodal responses supported participation by allowing them to interpret and articulate their opinions through different expressive forms. Integrating queer children's literature and arts-based literacy practices functions as an epistemic intervention in primary ELT, enabling pupils to engage with diverse perspectives, supporting a more plural and democratic form of classroom knowledge-making. More broadly, the study demostrates how everyday literacy practices in primary ELT can contribute to epistemic justice by expanding whose experiences and perspectives are recognized within classroom dialogue.