Queer, Trans, and/or Nonbinary French as a Second Language (FSL) Teachers’ Embodiment of Inclusivity in Their Teaching Practice

Increasingly, scholars are attending to questions of identity and power in French as a second language (FSL) education. An underdeveloped area of research is the experience of queer, trans, and nonbinary FSL teachers in Canada. Understanding how marginalized teachers navigate building inclusive and equitable learning spaces is the focus of this study. To this end, this study used narrative inquiry and photo elicitation methods to understand how—if at all—participants embody inclusivity in their classroom practices. Four themes emerged from this study: (1) (in)visibility of queerness, (2) performing a balancing act, (3) urgency to disrupt, and (4) navigating the teaching of a gendered language. These findings suggest that while participants in this study strive to build inclusive spaces for themselves and their students, external factors, such as fear of opposition and being reprimanded, abound. These findings offer insights into discursive moves to facilitate a meaningfully queered and inclusive FSL learning space, and contributes to the growing body of queer applied linguistics by revealing how queer teachers’ embodied practices can reshape inclusivity in FSL education.