Chapter 9: Our Stories as Curriculum: Queering Autoethnography, Curriculum Development, and Research

Performing autoethnographic explorations may provide multicultural teacher educators with opportunities to examine their own multicultural identities (e.g., race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, exceptionality, religion, sexual orientation, and gender) and how their identities may intersect with, and may impact, curriculum development. Based on literature reviews and analysis, and on my ongoing experiences of developing and performing queer multicultural teacher education curricula, I advocate for queering autoethnography and using it as a method for curriculum development. In this chapter, I highlight the importance of identity awareness (of self and others) in multicultural education and show how it is cautiously supported by a queer theory framework. I then apply these ideas to the curriculum development practices of teacher educators. It is my hope that others will perform queer autoethnographic explorations to better understand their multicultural identities; to deconstruct heteronormative assumptions through the appreciation of various perspectives and performances; and to recognize that identities, as well as curriculum, are fluid. By doing so, they may actively prepare themselves, and ultimately their students, to effectively navigate within, and hopefully change, the current unwelcoming heteronormative social climate.