Paper Title
South African Educators and Queer-themed Curricula: Exploring Willingness, Challenges, and Negotiations in Language Classrooms

Abstract
Characteristics of educators in education are to facilitate learning, inspire growth, build character, provide guidance, promote equity and inclusion, nurture potential, and foster social skills. Thus, the purpose of aneducator extends beyond simply imparting knowledge. Specifically in language teaching, educators teach a variety of language components (e.g., linguistics, literature, and writing) that may address societal marginalisation. Though South Africa remains a conservative country, there has been a gradual shift in perspective when it comes to teaching queer-themed components in the language classroom – this shift is the motivation for this paper, as limited research for the South African context endures. Consequently, if aneducator is unfamiliar with queer-themed curricula or lacks knowledge or experience in teaching it, they avoid creating awareness of and engagement with queer individuals and their lived experiences as a marginalised group. Therefore, this paper explores the willingness of South African educators to incorporate queer-themed curricula, the internal and external challenges they experience, and the negotiations considered when doing so. The theoretical framework for this study was Transformation Theory.Through a qualitative case study, purposeful sampling, questionnaires, content analysis and coding, it was found that therewere participants who were willing to teach queer-themed curricula in their language classrooms, but that they, similar to those who were unwilling to do so, also experienced internal conflicts and fears in terms of personal beliefs, values, and religion in the society at large. The contribution of this paper is to provide insight into these educators’ perspectives and the complexities of including queer-themed curricula. 1) Transformative learning as a disorienting dilemma, 2) the role of critical reflection and continuity, 3) resistance and religious world views as epistemological barriers, and 4) pragmatic approaches to navigating tension were the main themes that emanated from the participants’ responses. Collaborative decision-making, additional queer-themed modules as electives, and open dialogue were also practical recommendations suggested by the educators to include, instead of neglect or avoid, queer-themed curricula. Keywords - Content Analysis, Higher Education, Language Classrooms, Queer-Themed Curricula, South African Educators, Transformation Theory