Mapping Queer Places of Learning in Finnish Schools: Discourses of Teacher–Student Interactions

ABSTRACT Student–queer teacher interactions with relevance to learning about queer or LGBTQ+ themes emerge in different ways and contexts in everyday life of school. This article analyses group interview data of Finnish queer teachers, focusing on their reports on such interactions as places to provide teaching and learning about sexual and gender diversity and to employ pedagogical work that disrupts cisheteronormativity. Nexus analytically informed discourse analysis is utilised to establish these interactions as queer places of learning , sites of learning that emerge from the particular intersection of discourses, factors, and social practices. The analysis reveals the significance of students' actions and language use, as well as societal and institutional discourses, as entry points for queer‐relevant interactions, and illustrates how queer teachers navigate the complexity of these interactions through their queer pedagogical, transformative actions and practices.