Gauging Affective Atmospheres in Language Teacher Education Through Dialogic Queering as Transformative Research

Inspired by feminist queering and affect theories to disrupt research norms, we drew on our felt experiences to explore the affective atmosphere of language teacher education. In this experimental work, we harnessed affect and queer theories to contest the gendered, classed, and heteronormative atmosphere of language teacher education using a form of post-qualitative inquiry that we named “dialogic queering”. Given our marginalized backgrounds (queer; academic of colour; working-class female academic), dialogic queering creates spaces to explore difficult but genuine thoughts and feelings while challenging norms entrenched in language teacher education. Underpinned by critical empathy, dialogic queering allowed us to decenter prescriptive methodologies to explore the entanglements of gender diversity, inclusion, and queer theory. This queering embodiment demonstrates how norm-resistant approaches can empower language educators and researchers to disrupt the cis-heteronormative and neoliberal ways of thinking, learning, researching, and writing. We hope that our work can convey to readers the potentiality and power of dialogic queering as a form of post-qualitative inquiry to engender insights about language teacher education and research that surprise, resonate, and transform.