Engaging sexual identities in tertiary English classrooms : a Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) approach to designing a critical sexual literacy curriculum

Abstract

Studies on critical gender and sexual curriculum have been conducted in Western countries in the past three decades. However, such research is still at the emerging stage in Asia. Very often, it has been delayed, sidelined, or isolated to a once-in-a-lifetime session in a liberal studies course or sex education curriculum throughout the life of a secondary student in Hong Kong. Inspired by Nelson’s (2009) pioneering work on queer language education, the researcher would like to use the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach (Coyle, Hood, and Marsh, 2010) to design a critical sexual curriculum to try out how to teach both content knowledge and language matters in designing a sexuality equity curriculum in Hong Kong by using multimodal texts and resources like online news articles, music videos, and episodes of social experiments on YouTube, as well as lived experience of individuals from the local queer community. Drawing insights from critical literacies and dramatic skills in Freirean critical pedagogy and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (1979/2008), the researcher attempted to weave critical inquiry and performative emotions into sexual literacy learning in the study. In this exploratory action case study, data were collected from two 10-hour cycles of a five-unit extracurricular language enrichment programme conducted with a total of 21 associate degree students in a local community college, comprising over 20 contact hours of classroom interaction, field notes, student writings, role-plays, dramas, and post-class interviews. Data from the pre- and post-test questionnaires and writings, in-class discussion and writings, written student reflections, and post class interviews, shows that the curriculum has created a heteroglossic space to raise critical awareness about gender and sexuality issues. It also shows that students were emotionally engaged in the interaction with the texts, LGBTI people in the class, and a variety of identity-focused language arts activities like mini-ethnography of popular magazines, writing letters to an imagined LGBTI person for the empty chair activity, presentation, as well as Theatre of the Oppression. The CLIL approach to curriculum design has also enabled the integrated teaching of both content and language to develop sexual literacy in the language classroom. Students have reported and shown knowledge and language gain in the study. It is hoped that this exploratory study would be able to demonstrate that critical literacies and language arts can be of great use to cultivate critical awareness and emotional engagement in teaching about gender and sexual identity issues (Beach, Johnston, & Thein, 2015; Brass & Webb, 2015; Hanley, Noblit, Sheppard, & Barone, 2013); and to serve as a curriculum model for teachers in English language education, liberal studies, gender and sexuality studies, and other related disciplines to introduce diversity and social justice education in the classroom.