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Paper short abstract:

Through Performance Practice as Research, this piece analyzes the assemblages of the gender norm on the first gender transition process of a teacher in a private Chilean elite school, generating methodologically and epistemologically subversive procedures for academic research in Education.

Paper long abstract:

In 2022, a secondary education Drama teacher started secretly experiencing a process that would cause a series of uncertainties in the quotidian life within one of the most prestigious elite private schools in Chile.

Critical to the heteronormative practices (Madrid, 2016; Ahmed, 2021) that constitute the school’s narrative, this work analyzes through a performative stage practice the assemblages of the gender norm in my experience as the first person carrying a transition process within this school.

This paper-performance characterizes material collected from these social practices in the first year of the transition -from complete secrecy to the process of public endorsement-, including its multiple discursive-material affections through my trans-teacher body.

A performative scenic practice (Kershaw, 2009) constitutes the research-creation methodology around an epistemological paradigm that situates the body assemblage (Jagger, 2015; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019; Jackson & Mazzei, 2013) in its performative dimension (Butler, 2007).

The experience of sexual diversity poses important challenges for educational communities (Harris & Jones, 2014; Barrientos et. al, 2021; Lizama, 2022) and the repercussions of this violence on bodies are located transversally within the affective space of the school as an assemblage (Dernikos et. al, 2020). Research on gender transitions in educational contexts is increasing both locally and internationally, although the literature from the experience of teachers is still developing in Latin America.

The scenic performative practice as a research methodology in the educational context proposes a transdisciplinary approach between pedagogical practice and the performing arts, generating methodological and epistemologically subversive material on the ways of generating educational academic research in this territory. This work considers the political implications of generating such a process in the Chilean context while proposing a reflection based on affirmative ethics (Braidotti, 2014) around affect, secrecy, safety,y and support for transgender people in schools.