Review Reports - Resisting Uniformity: How Transgender and Gender-Diverse Teachers Subvert School Dress Codes for Self-Affirmation and Possibility

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The integration of Barad's feminist new materialism with Wieringa's symbolic subversion is innovative and productive, offering a fresh analytical lens that moves beyond simplistic narratives of compliance or resistance. The object interview methodology generates rich, evocative data, and your three focal participants-Charlie, Oli, and Blue- provide compelling insights into the complex, contextually dependent nature of gender subversion in educational settings.

The vignette-style presentation is particularly effective, drawing readers into the material-discursive assemblages in ways that feel immediate and grounded, and your methodological reflexivity about the post-hoc analytical pivot demonstrates admirable scholarly transparency.

However, the paper would benefit from several substantive revisions to strengthen its contribution. First, explicit research questions should be stated early in the paper, as their absence makes it difficult to evaluate whether the study delivers on its promises. The methodology section, while transparent about your analytical shift, needs more detail about how the three participants were selected from the larger studies beyond them "glowing" in the data, and the analytical process itself, how you moved from transcripts to thematic assemblages, requires clearer explanation.

The literature review, though grounded in key theorists, feels somewhat thin in places and would benefit from deeper engagement with existing scholarship on dress codes and professionalism in education, more substantial integration of the growing literature on transgender teachers' workplace experiences (particularly Bancroft and Greenspan's directly relevant work), and stronger intersectional framing around race and class. Given that all three focal participants appear to be white, the paper needs earlier signalling of this demographic limitation and more robust discussion of how racialized and classed dimensions of professionalism might shape different experiences. This is particularly important since you acknowledge this gap only in the limitations section.

The concept of "c/overt" appears throughout but is not explicitly defined or theorized; if this is your original contribution, it needs unpacking to clarify how it differs from simply "covert or overt." Some key terms also require definition for broader accessibility: "gender-diverse" is used interchangeably with "transgender" and sometimes as distinct, "SEND school" needs explanation for international readers, and "passing" is used but not defined.

The theoretical framework, while generally strong, occasionally feels applied rather than doing genuine analytical work. For instance, the discussion of entanglement and intra-action in lines 94-98 is somewhat abstract, and you might consider showing more explicitly how these Baradian concepts shaped your analytical questions and what they allow you to see that other frameworks wouldn't.

The conclusion, though supported by your analysis, reads somewhat abrupt and would benefit from more explicit discussion of implications for practice, clearer articulation of how this study advances transgender studies in education, and specific directions for future research beyond the general call for more intersectional work.

There are also minor technical considerations: ensure consistent formatting of block quotes, consider whether the long Barad quote (lines 720-728) needs to be this lengthy or could be partially paraphrased, and review the specificity of identifying details (particularly Blue's distinctive tattoo image) to ensure participant anonymity is adequately protected.

Additional methodological transparency would strengthen the paper. Readers would benefit from knowing interview lengths, whether participants were given advance notice about bringing objects, how the two researchers collaborated on analysis, and what software or tools were used for data management.

Despite these areas for improvement, this is fundamentally a strong paper with compelling arguments, rich empirical material, and important theoretical contributions. The core analysis is sound and your engagement with participants' experiences is both respectful and analytically generative. With revisions addressing the substantive points raised above, particularly around clarifying research questions and methods, strengthening intersectional engagement, and unpacking key concepts, this will be an excellent and meaningful addition to the literature on transgender teachers and gender diversity in education, offering insights that matter not only for scholarship but for the lives of gender-diverse educators navigating institutional spaces daily.

Author Response

Reviewer Feedback:

Link to paper

Red = Explicit instruction

Blue = Response to instruction

This is a commendable and theoretically sophisticated paper that makes valuable contributions to our understanding of how transgender and gender-diverse teachers navigate professional dress codes through acts of resistance and self-affirmation. The integration of Barad's feminist new materialism with Wieringa's symbolic subversion is innovative and productive, offering a fresh analytical lens that moves beyond simplistic narratives of compliance or resistance. The object interview methodology generates rich, evocative data, and your three focal participants-Charlie, Oli, and Blue- provide compelling insights into the complex, contextually dependent nature of gender subversion in educational settings. The vignette-style presentation is particularly effective, drawing readers into the material-discursive assemblages in ways that feel immediate and grounded, and your methodological reflexivity about the post-hoc analytical pivot demonstrates admirable scholarly transparency.

However, the paper would benefit from several substantive revisions to strengthen its contribution. First, explicit research questions should be stated early in the paper, as their absence makes it difficult to evaluate whether the study delivers on its promises.

Research Questions specifically addressed early on demonstrating if we did to what we were aiming.
- At the end of the introduction section prior to the theoretical framework, we added:
  - This study addresses the following questions:
    - How do transgender and gender-diverse teachers navigate and subvert professional dress codes within school contexts?
    - In what ways do material objects (e.g. clothing, accessories, or bodily alterations) mediate acts of self-affirmation and resistance?
    - How do these everyday material-discursive negotiations reveal broader institutional entanglements of gender, professionalism, and power.

The methodology section, while transparent about your analytical shift, needs more detail about how the three participants were selected from the larger studies beyond them "glowing" in the data, and the analytical process itself, how you moved from transcripts to thematic assemblages, requires clearer explanation.

Bring out more explicitly why the three participants were chosen from the span of the other participants in both of the wider studies.
- In the methods section within paragraph 2 after “we therefore identified three distinct participants, this has been added.
  - We therefore identified three distinct participants and their chosen objects, which were initially a part of the larger datasets from each study, to examine in closer analysis. This selection was guided by interpretive engagement instead of statistical representation. Importantly, these participants were ‘identified’ because their narratives and objects exhibited rich material-discursive entanglements with objects that illuminated the complexities of gendered professionalism. Their experiences and explanations stayed with us long after the interviews, troubling our thoughts and drawing us into deeper engagement with their data ‘glow’ and ‘wonder’ (MacLure, 2013a). Transcripts and field notes were read iteratively by both researchers using a process of diffractive analysis (Barad, 2007; Jackson & Mazzei, 2022), which involved tracing patterns of resonance and difference between the empirical material and theoretical concepts (entanglement, intra-action, symbolic subversion). Through collaborative coding discussions, we identified emergent thematic assemblages that reflected both affective and material intensities. NVivo qualitative software supported this process by enabling the organisation of excerpts related to materiality, embodiment, and professional negotiation.

The literature review, though grounded in key theorists, feels somewhat thin in places and would benefit from deeper engagement with existing scholarship on dress codes and professionalism in education, more substantial integration of the growing literature on transgender teachers' workplace experiences (particularly Bancroft and Greenspan's directly relevant work), and stronger intersectional framing around race and class.

Added in more to the literature review section on dress codes and professionalism in education part of this section now reads:
- The limited recent research has begun to trace the affective and political labour involved in these negotiations. Bancroft and Greenspan’s (2023) study in rural northwest England offers insight into how non-binary teachers can disrupt normative gender expectations by wearing clothing typically coded as masculine (i.e. shirts and ties) within environments that require strict adherence to gender performance. This participant’s account in Bancroft and Greenspan’s (2023) research is especially important because it demonstrates how clothing is more than personal expression, it plays an active role in shaping and responding to school rules, physical spaces, and the broader social messages about gender while also highlighting the intersections of geography, class, and gender expression on respectability and professionalism.
- Research examining dress and bodily presentation in education has recognised the role these elements play in moral and professional regulation of teachers (Brown & Diale, 2017; Jospeh, 2017; Moorosi, 2012; Workman & Freeburg, 2010). Professionalism in teaching is demonstrated through skill and competence but has been found to also be embodied through certain aesthetics of modesty, and classed behaviour (Cano Diaz, 2024; Ingram, 2018; Keenan, 2017; Pajaziti, 2025). These norms are historically racialised and gendered, reflecting white, middle-class ideals of respectability that frame deviation as unprofessional (Costello, 2005; Keenan, 2017; Joseph, 2017; Ramdeo, 2022; Workman & Freeburg, 2010). Such constructions place teachers’ bodies and dress as signifiers of moral order, framing transgender and gender diverse teachers especially visible (and vulnerable), when their embodiment challenges institutional norms.
- The referenced work by Bancroft and Greenspan and transgender teacher’s experiences is already in the literature review:
  - Page 6: “Bancroft and Greenspan’s (2023) study in rural northwest England offers insight into how non-binary teachers can disrupt normative gender expectations by wearing clothing typically coded as masculine (i.e. shirts and ties) within environments that require strict adherence to gender performance. This is especially important because clothing is more than personal expression, it plays an active role in shaping and responding to school rules, physical spaces, and the broader social messages about gender.”

Given that all three focal participants appear to be white, the paper needs earlier signalling of this demographic limitation and more robust discussion of how racialized and classed dimensions of professionalism might shape different experiences. This is particularly important since you acknowledge this gap only in the limitations section.

Inserted into the end of the methodology section: Importantly, while this paper centres the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse teachers, it is essential to note that the three main participants are all white teachers. This demographic limitation reflects the broader racial homogeneity of the teaching profession in England and raises critical questions about how racialised and classed expectations of professionalism intersect with gendered embodiment.

The concept of "c/overt" appears throughout but is not explicitly defined or theorized; if this is your original contribution, it needs unpacking to clarify how it differs from simply "covert or overt." Some key terms also require definition for broader accessibility: "gender-diverse" is used interchangeably with "transgender" and sometimes as distinct, "SEND school" needs explanation for international readers, and "passing" is used but not defined.

C/overt:

This text was added in at the end of the first paragraph in the findings and discussion with the heading C/overt self-empowerment and affirmation, the text was added after the sentence ending in “that determine the material-discursive conditions through which gender can or cannot be performed.”: The term ‘c/overt’ is used within this assemblage to denote the simultaneous presence of covert (hidden, subtle) and overt (visible, explicit) forms of resistance while also intersecting with various social and environmental conditions. This conceptual dynamic illustrates how transgender and gender-diverse teachers’ practices often operate along a continuum of visibility, where acts of affirmation and subversion are continuously entangled and interwoven rather than simply dichotomous.

Transgender and gender diverse term:

Throughout this paper, we use “transgender and gender-diverse” to describe individuals whose gender identities and expressions differ from cisnormative expectations, including but not limited to transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer people. The use of “gender-diverse” and “transgender” has been updated and edited throughout to remain consistent, unless it is directly associated with how a participant identifies and the term they use for themself.

SEND School:

The terms within the acronym (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) have been added where “SEND” is within the paper to help with definition and description.

“Passing”

The points around passing have had added content to ensure the term is more fully addressed and defined.
- Right after Figure 1 when discussing Charlie, it now reads: Charlie (he/him) is a white transgender man in his early twenties. He ‘passes’ as cisgender, (i.e. he is a transgender and gender-diverse person who is perceived by others as cisgender) and works in a primary school in the south of England. Seeing as Charlie ‘passes’ as a cisgender man, he is not publicly out to his pupils, their parents or the majority of his colleagues, a condition which may afford Charlie a privilege of safety or legitimacy, but something he recognises also reinforces normative gender binaries.

To address this feedback, in the section of the theoretical framework mentioned, after the Barad (2007, p. 33) quote ending in “but emerge through their intra-action”, we added some content about how this lens was used in practice and what this framework does as compared to using potential others.
- “These concepts, while serving as theoretical anchors, were also important analytical tools which shaped our research questions and interpretive process. Importantly, when applied to the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse teachers, these feminist new materialist ideas prompted us to ask not only what transgender and gender-diverse teachers do to resist professional dress codes, but how their resistances, affirmations, and professional identities emerged through the ongoing entanglements of bodies, clothing, school policies and affective connections. This Baradian lens also shaped how we interpreted the data. During analysis we focused on moments where material objects and discourses appeared to co-constitute each other (i.e. moments where a binder, tattoo, or staff dress code policy actively participated in shaping what forms of gendered professionalism became possible for the participant).”
- “The Baradian elements of entanglement and intra-action thus allowed us to amplify the vitality and materiality of gendered practices, classroom spaces and institutional regulatory policies that are continually and collectively formed through emergent, entangled material-discursive intra-actions. By applying entanglement and intra-action, this research brings into conversation how transgender and gender-diverse teachers’ professional lives are produced through the continual entangling of bodies, spaces, language, and regulation. Conducting the research through this lens, makes more apparent the dynamics that representational or social-constructionist approaches may overlook, highlighting how matter itself participates in knowledge production.”

The conclusion, though supported by your analysis, reads somewhat abrupt and would benefit from more explicit discussion of implications for practice, clearer articulation of how this study advances transgender studies in education, and specific directions for future research beyond the general call for more intersectional work.

This paper has explored how transgender and gender-diverse teachers subvert and reconfigure school dress codes through everyday material acts that are, at times, both resistant and affirmative. Our analysis has highlighted the importance of re-examining dress code policies through a lens of gender inclusivity and material agency. While schools often purport to use dress codes policies to create a sense of belonging and community, these professional demands can actually limit gender inclusivity, as these teachers have shown. We argue that with deliberate policy reform that is attentive to how material practices (e.g., uniforms, dress expectations) shape and enable who feels legitimate as a teacher, schools can become more gender affirming spaces where all students and teachers can experience self-affirmation. Theoretically, by drawing on feminist new materialism and symbolic subversion, we have shown that professional dress codes are not neutral, fixed, or apolitical, they are policies that are entangled with affect, power, and possibility. Our analysis of these assemblages highlighted the distributed agency of gendered resistance and extended these conceptions beyond individual transgression. Barad’s (2007) contribution of intra-action illuminates how these teachers’ choices emerge through ongoing negotiations across institutional assemblages, bodies, clothing, policies, spaces, and dominant cultural discourse (van Amsterdam et al., 2023; Zembylas, 2014).

The Barad quote in (lines 720-728) was shortened slightly.
Original Barad Quote, p. 16-17: “Bodies do not simply take their places in the world. They are not simply situated in, or located in, particular environments. Rather, ‘‘environments’’ and ‘‘bodies’’ are intra-actively co-constituted. Bodies (‘‘human,’’ ‘‘environmental,’’ or otherwise) are integral “parts’’ of, or dynamic reconfigurings of, what is.” (Barad, 2007, p.170)
Shortened Barad Quote: p. 16: “Bodies do not simply take their places in the world. They are not simply situated in, or located in, particular environments. Rather, ‘‘environments’’ and ‘‘bodies’’ are intra-actively co-constituted.” (Barad, 2007, p.170)
Cropped down Blue’s tattoo image more so there were fewer identifying features within the image which may impact Blue being identified. We also contacted each participant to seek approval to use the images and they consented to the use of them for the article.

Additional methodological transparency would strengthen the paper. Readers would benefit from knowing interview lengths, whether participants were given advance notice about bringing objects, how the two researchers collaborated on analysis, and what software or tools were used for data management.

More transparency to these elements has been added in to the materials and methods section of the article.
- Participants were notified by each researcher to bring their object with them to their interview. To ethically protect and provide our participants agency, both researchers offered participants the chance to choose a pseudonym or their name as they saw fit. Participant’s individual interviews within each study lasted around an hour and were audio recorded and transcribed with participant’s consent using Microsoft Teams software.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Resisting uniformity: How transgender and gender-diverse teachers subvert school dress codes for self-affirmation and possibility

This paper contributes a sophisticated theoretical application to the topic of trans affirmation and gender justice by looking in detail at the subjective processes of gender making of three gender-diverse teachers. The author draws quite suitably on existing literature, especially around transgender teachers in schools, as well as some trans studies to inform the theoretical framework.

It would be good to look at Lee Airton’s work on supporting trans teachers. Although Butler is referenced once, it would seem Butler’s work on gendered subjectivation informs more of the thinking here than is cited and could be clearly referenced further, especially as the notion of conditional agency seems particularly relevant to this discussion. The paper draws on a form of feminist materialism to articulate the resonance that material objects hold for gender-diverse teachers in the making of their own gendered identity within school contexts that are either permissible or constraining to their gender expressions. It also looks briefly at spatiality in the opening comments, but not further in the analysis except where the author theorizes the ongoing entanglement of bodies, spaces, relations, etc. In that way, gendered spatialization may be something the author is interested in referencing or exploring. For expansion on the point about architecture (line 175), please see: Ingrey, J. C. (2016). Heterotopia. In Critical Concepts in Queer Studies and Education: An International Guide for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 149-159). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.

The author theorizes the gender negotiations around dress code as being in both complicity with and resistant to cisnormative regimes of professionalism. Excellent to include the nuance around trans visibility as both resistance and a “site of risk”. The trap of visibility from Green (2017) would be helpful to reference here. (Green, K. M. (2017). Trans* movement/trans* moment: An afterword. International

Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(3), 320–321.)

The focus on three teachers provides good scope for the paper as well excellent depth in the discussion. The methodology around object-based interviews is refreshing and provides quite interesting data through vignettes, commentary, and analysis. The brief mention of data glow and wonder in the methods section is repeated but not explained fully and not draw upon later in the discussion, which would be helpful for cohesion and clarity. It would be helpful to specify if the participants were asked to bring an item of clothing to their interview, or if this just happened to be how the three teachers interpreted the request. It would also be helpful to articulate what a school dress code for teachers might look like, especially in the case of the three teachers featured here. For instance, in Canada, school dress code applies to student dress rather than staff, where explicit codes for staff dress might exist in Health and Safety training modules, but is not publicly transparent.

The relationality between researcher(s) and participants, especially in that some sense of co-constructed understanding and meaning is happening here is quite interesting as per the vignettes but not commented on earlier or in the discussion. It should either be removed as this is not the purpose of the article or somewhere be indicated that this idea cannot be fully discussed due to the scope of the paper. Overall, I really enjoyed the analysis as it pulled through many of the theoretical threads to this site of exploring teachers’ gendered negotiations in their particular school environments. The writing is strong, the theoretical depth is interesting and well done, and it proves to contribute to the field around outlining the subjective responses to policy written for and in cisnormativity to the benefit of justifying more gender expansive ways of thinking about policy and practice in schools.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf