Building Civic Futures Through Epistemic Friction: LGBTQ+ Youth and Democratic Dialogue in a Middle Grades Classroom

In the current US sociopolitical climate, LGBTQ+ students and educators face intensifying curricular censorship and renewed contestation over whose identities and knowledges are legitimized in schools. Against this backdrop, this article employs critical sociocultural theory to examine how three LGBTQ+ middle grade students and their teacher in a northeastern U.S. Catholic school navigate a politically charged classroom discussion about Florida's “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this qualitative case study investigates how epistemic friction operates as a productive discursive practice that supports, rather than impedes, classroom dialogue. Findings illustrate how students and their teacher collaboratively worked through friction by staking, navigating, and expanding epistemic authority. Students’ discursive moves reveal that authority in the classroom was not fixed but dynamically negotiated through relational care and resistance. This study advances literacy scholarship by illustrating how discussions of LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula can cultivate generative democratic discourse and by underscoring the pedagogical potential of epistemic friction in English language arts classroom environments.