Embodying responsibility? Understanding educators’ engagement in queer educational justice work in schools

Despite extensive policy, regulation, and activism, heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and other forms of oppression, flourish in schools. Based on interviews with educators in schools, queer social movement organizations, school boards and teachers’ unions in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, this chapter analyzes the strategies of queer educational justice work in schools. Working with Gilbert’s call to do more than ‘being on the right side’ and Rasmussen, Sanjakdar, Allen, Quinlivan, and Bromdal’s complications of how we think responsibility, I argue that it is possible to differentiate three strategies of queer educational justice work: reflexive identity politics, intersectional systems critique, and individual humanism. I also contend that responsibility for queer educational justice work is attached to queer educators through fear. It is necessary to analyze this attachment of responsibility to understand how it can undermine the work of QSM and queer educational justice work in schools

An Investigation of Indoor Air Quality in UK Passivhaus Dwellings

The adoption of the German Passivhaus Standard in the UK has grown rapidly in recent years. Stimulated by the shift towards energy efficient design and rising fuel costs, the concept is perceived as a potential means of meeting energy and carbon targets through an established, reliable methodology. However the performance of the Standard in terms of adequate indoor air quality and thermal comfort in a UK climate remains under-researched. This paper describes the use of the Passivhaus Standard in a UK context, and its potential implications on indoor environmental quality. A case study is presented, which included indoor air quality measurements, occupant diary, building survey and occupant interviews in a Passivhaus social housing project in Northern Ireland. The study found issues with indoor air quality, the use and maintenance of Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) systems, lack of occupant knowledge and the perception of overheating in the case study dwellings. The findings provide a much needed insight into the indoor environmental quality in homes designed to the Passivhaus standard; which can be disseminated to aid the development of an effective sustainable building design that is both appropriate to localised climatic conditions and also sensitive to the health of building occupants