ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, social, cultural, and political theorists have expanded their horizons beyond focusing on issues of gender, race, class, ethnicity, dis/ability, and religion, to include issues of sexual identity and sexual orientation. Yet, the movement towards an explicitly queer theory or theories for education has been far slower andmore cautious. This is consistent with the slow pace of educational research on queer issues in general, when compared with other professional fields like law and social work. The first educational research focused on “homosexual issues” was led by psychologists and school social workers who tended to embrace a safety rationale (these particular public school students were “at-risk” for bullying, dropping out, etc.) for their research. By the mid-1990s, increasing numbers of teacher educators and curriculum theorists beganworking in this area (Unks, 1995), expanding both the theoretical complexity and the research base. By the late 1990s, researchers were gingerly beginning to use queer theory to frame educational research (see Pinar, 1998).
