Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2026
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Department
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
First Advisor
Dr. Ericka Roland
Second Advisor
Dr. Ambra Green
Third Advisor
Dr. Meredith Billings
Abstract
This dissertation investigates how political rhetoric, education policy, and educational community member discourse construct, circulate, and contest meanings about trans*ness and dis/ability in K-12 public schools. In doing so, the study examines how meanings about normativity are discursively produced and disrupted for students living at this specific intersection. Grounded in a trans* methodology, this study performs a critical discourse analysis through a rhizomatic reading of policy texts, political rhetoric, and publicly available stakeholder discourse. This work responds to a gap in the literature that fails to understand the complexities experienced by trans* students with dis/abilities, particularly in hostile school climates.
Findings reveal three thresholds that represent how discourse shifted across various sites to produce new realities related to normativity. These thresholds included: (1) the framing of difference in trans* students as deranged and disordered through hostile discourse seeking to erase trans* lives; (2) the intentional construction of trans* embodiments as disabled students through cisgendered advocacy discourse to secure legal accommodations in schools; and (3) discursive trans* resistance that contested the cis narratives that they were broken and demonstrated that they are always/already in processes of becoming that reflect their truest selves. Across these logics, disability discourse emerges as the primary mechanism through which trans* identities become legible to educational institutions, thereby enabling governance that results in surveillance, policing, and remediation or erasure efforts. Notably, normativity is pushed onto trans* students in hostile and supportive cisgendered contexts. Nonetheless, trans* discourse demonstrates a multiplicity of resistance strategies that refuse to cave to the institution.
Ultimately, this research extends existing scholarship by tracing how normativity is produced relationally across policy, rhetoric, and practice and by highlighting resistance as both generative and constrained. The study also conceptualizes the intersectional relationship between trans*ness and dis/ability as often discursively produced, rather than always biologically inherent. Together, the findings of the study call for a reimagining of educational systems towards more transformative possibilities for trans* students with and without dis/abilities.
Keywords
Trans Students, Disabilities, Gender, Social Justice, Education Policy, Special Education, Section 504, Critical Discourse Analysis, Trans Students with Disabilities, Disability Discourse
Disciplines
Disability and Equity in Education | Educational Leadership | Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration | Gender Equity in Education | Special Education Administration | Special Education and Teaching
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Meredith, Meagan, "(Trans*)gressing discourse: Producing and disrupting normativity in education for trans* students with dis/abilities" (2026). Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Dissertations - Archive. 228.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/edleadershippolicy_dissertations/228
Included in
Educational Leadership Commons, Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration Commons, Gender Equity in Education Commons, Special Education Administration Commons, Special Education and Teaching Commons