Queering the Classroom: Disrupting White Cisheteronormativity in Nursing Education

Teaching about oppression reifies othering and normativity. Teaching against oppression requires a commitment to dismantling the structures that maintain privilege associated with dominant and normative identities (Kumashiro, 2002). This distinction aligns with the shift in nursing education praxis from "cultural competency" toward cultural humility, safety, and responsiveness. Even nurse educators who wish to enact an "inclusive" model of education can find themselves on the shoals of "othering," reinforcing structures of power and inequity in their education praxis. The key word here is "structures"-- nursing faculty and nursing learners function within "interlocking systems" of oppression (Hill Collins, 1990) that perpetuate harm and deficit models of difference. Nurse educators often lack the tools to critically interrogate and transform their praxis. This points to the reality that no one person alone can dismantle structural inequity. However, together as a collective, we can "queer" our perspective (Ahmed, 2006) and reimagine nursing education from a norm-critical standpoint (Tengelin, 2019). We must problematize "comfortable" norms and core "competencies," interrogating our beliefs that perpetuate structures that harm students, patients and faculty.

We hope that faculty come away from this discussion feeling uncomfortable and unsettled, ready to question their core beliefs about what it means to be a nurse educator. Only through this discomfort and unsettling can real change occur. Following this discussion, nurse educators will be able to examine their syllabi, schedules, dress codes, course materials and learner outcomes from a norm-critical standpoint, identifying opportunities to adapt curricula and programs to mitigate against structural harms.

Caitlin Nye
MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CHSE
Clinical Assistant Professor
Upstate Medical University College of Nursing

Biography

Caitlin Nye (she/her/hers) is a Clinical Assistant Professor at SUNY Upstate and a third year PhD student at SUNY University at Buffalo. Her research focuses on nursing education, and her work is centered on utilizing a norm-critical framework to challenge and deconstruct norms, power and othering in nursing education praxis. She has a particular interest in using this lens to enhance the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) health and social topics in pre-licensure, undergraduate nursing education.

Her most recent publication is a "Practice Transitions" column in the American Journal of Nursing on the subject of providing culturally responsive care to transgender and gender diverse patient populations. Caitlin lives in Syracuse, New York. The Onondaga Nation, firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, are the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands the city of Syracuse and Upstate Medical University now stand.

Phone: 267-251-4064
Email: nyec@upstate.edu

Co-Author(s):
Jessica Dillard-Wright, PhD, MA, RN, CNM