Ten lesbian students reflect on their secondary school experiences.

This thesis comprises part of a parallel study currently being undertaken with a gay male researcher. It investigates the secondary school experiences of lesbian and gay youth and the ways in which these experiences affected young lesbians coming to terms with their emerging lesbian identities. Using qualitative research methodology, two semi-structured interviews were conducted across two urban sites with ten young lesbian women between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Various feminist theories and contemporary adolescent developmental theories were drawn on to provide a context within which the participants' experiences could be situated. The research revealed that with one notable exception. Secondary schools do little to support young women who do not conform to the heterosexual norm. As a result the participants felt marginalised and excluded both within the school curriculum and from their peers and teachers. Many felt compelled to suppress their sexual identity. The strategies that they used to do this and their negative effects are then described. Finally I draw upon previous studies and the participants' suggestions to suggest ways in which schools could change to meet the needs of lesbian students more fully

On dangerous ground: working towards affirming representations of sexual diversity for students in two New Zealand secondary schools

This thesis explores what's possible in terms of affirming sexual diversity in two New Zealand case study schools, Takehe High School and Kereru Girls' College, between 1996 and 1998. The research process was characterised by a number of shifts that arose in the interests of theoretical width and also because of methodological necessity. Initially the research project was developed within an affirmative action model. However over time, the study increasingly became informed by Foncauldian, queer and feminist post-structural frameworks. These theoretical paradigms provided a way to move beyond framing lesbian and gay students in schools as a disadvantaged minority group with personal deficits. The frameworks were also helpful in focusing on the ways in which heteronormative discourses are produced and destabilised within the two case study schools. In addition, Foucauldian, queer and feminist post-structural frameworks provided ways to explore the complex and mutable nature of sexuality, and possible pedagogical directions for students to be able to explore the discursive construction of sexuality and gender in the classroom. Foucauldian analytical tools such as genealogy also proved helpful in accounting for the constraints that arose in the second case study school because of the presence of the project in the school. The final stage of the research process led to what I am describing as an informed action approach. Foucauldian, queer and feminist post-structural frameworks may provide helpful (if challenging) directions in terms of addressing sexual diversity within the formal curriculum. However, I also suggest that affirming sexual diversity in schools should also involve having an understanding of the ideological, structural and micro and macro contextual constraints that will arise when issues of sexual diversity are explored within school contexts. This joint approach may go some way to ensuring that action to affirm sexual diversity in schools can be well informed

Homophobia, transphobia, young people and the question of responsibility

Young people may face conflicting and confusing messages about what it means to respond well in relation to homophobia and transphobia. Consequently, we ask – What might it mean to respond well to homophobia and transphobia? This strategy, inspired by Anika Thiem and Judith Butler, is recognition of the ambivalent conditions which structure attempts to respond well to bullying related to gender and sexuality. Such an approach is counter to educational responses that suggest a remedy in advance of the enactment of perceived bullying. Our paper draws on research conducted by the authors in four schools, two in Australia and two in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is a deliberate turn away from focusing on who should be held to account for homophobia and transphobia

Intersex Bodies in Sexuality Education On the Edge of Cultural Difference

Social moderation is often presented as a mechanism capable of improving the dependability of assessment information and strengthening teacher assessment capability. Although the professional learning benefits associated with social moderation are frequently promoted, the teacher learning that effective moderation necessitates tends to be overlooked. Addressing a gap in the research on social moderation, this paper examines how the professional learning opportunities that teachers experience during social moderation processes affect the robustness of the resulting assessment information. Located within the context of New Zealand's recently introduced National Standards assessment system, in which participation in school-based social moderation is a requirement, this paper draws on data collected from three urban schools. It reports on the teacher learning and assessment outcomes associated with the moderation processes at these schools. New Zealand's National Standards moderation activities are expected to improve the dependability of teachers' assessment information; yet they have not been tightly prescribed and schools have been given considerable freedom to develop their own moderation processes. To capture each school's interpretation and enactment of social moderation, the study reported on in this paper utilises a mixed-methods design. Data collection, which is ongoing during the 2012 school year, includes observations of moderation and meeting sessions, semi-structured interviews, surveys, think-aloud sessions and the collection of student assessment information. Analyses to date suggest that participation in social moderation processes is providing teachers with valuable learning opportunities as well as beginning to improve the dependability of assessment information. But these preliminary findings also indicate that New Zealand schools are responding in a variety of ways to the new moderation requirements. Drawing on evidence-based research on effective professional learning, the results will be interpreted in terms of the learning opportunities that the moderation approaches adopted at each of the participating schools have afforded the teacher participants. The paper also presents a second analysis, examining the effect that each moderation process has had on the dependability of assessment information. The findings of these two analyses afford insights into how teacher professional learning contributes to effective social moderation practices

Who's afraid of sex at school? The politics of researching culture, religion and sexuality at school

This paper explores the methodological politics of researching at the intersections of sexuality, culture and religion in secondary schools. It draws on experiences during a project concerned with how to address cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education in Australia and New Zealand. The paper focuses on two methodological sticking points, one occurring inside academia and the other outside, in schools. The first coheres around the process of gaining ethics approval from multiple institutional committees and the second accesses schools for participation. These sticking points are conceptualized as effects of a set of discursive and material constraints which are idiosyncratic to school-based sexualities research. We argue that discourses of sexuality and young people are mobilized in both spaces and intersect with a social moment of ‘risk anxiety’ in ways that shape the methodological possibilities of the research. These discourses serve to constitute sexualities research as ‘risky’ and ‘controversial’, an image which impedes the generation of new knowledge in the field. By rendering challenges of this research visible and discursively deconstructing the reasons for them, we refuse to dismiss school-based sexualities research as ‘too hard’. Instead, we aim to keep this topic firmly on the educational research agenda by alerting researchers to its challenges so they may prepare for them

In search of critical pedagogy in sexuality education: visions, imaginations, and paradoxes

This article is about the purposes and the processes of teaching comprehensive sexuality education to diverse communities. We argue that establishing an educational response to addressing diversity in sexuality education involves challenging and interrupting current dominant forms of authority, subordination, and systems of hegemony prevalent in the teaching practices of this subject. We argue that critical pedagogy (influenced by the Frankfurt school of thought and developed by Freire 1974, 1973; Giroux 1988, 2003; and Kincheloe 2004) is a vehicle to explore and expand existing teaching pedagogies and cultural investments in sexuality education, as well as a way to contribute toward more effective teaching and student learning in this subject area. The turn to critical pedagogy in this article is an acknowledgement that the dilemmas of the secondary classroom and the questions of what becomes of sexual knowledge in that space are too big to ignore. Conservative pedagogies still reign in school-based sexuality education. Educational standards in this subject area are still strictly associated with risk knowledge (McWilliams 1996) and normative ideals of sex, sexuality, and gender are pervasive in the teaching practices of this subject (Allen 2007; Rasmussen 2006)

Meeting at the crossroads: re-conceptualising difference in research teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to attempt to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education. Drawing Todd’s (2003, 2011a, b) concepts of 'the crossroads', 'becoming present' and 'relationality' in conversation with Barad’s (2003, 2007, 2012) ideas around relationality and intra-activity, the paper explores how “difference” in team research might be re-conceptualised. The aim is to theorise difference, differently from Other methodological literature around collaborative research. Typically, this work highlights markers of difference based on researcher identity (such as gender and ethnicity) as the source of difference in research teams, and examines how these differences are worked through. The aim of this paper is not to resolve difference, but understand it as occurring in the relational process of researchers becoming present to each other. Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual (Barad, 2012), may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is philosophical and methodological. It draws on conceptual understandings from feminist educational philosophy and new materialisms. Findings are based on empirical experiences of a team of researchers exploring cultural and religious difference in sexuality education. Its aim is to re-think the ontology of 'difference' as conventionally understood in qualitative methodological literature around team research. Findings – The contribution to conceptualising difference in research teams is to apply Todd’s (2011a) theoretical work around 'becoming', 'relationality' and the 'crossroads' and further delineate it with Barad’s (2012) concept of intra-activity. Combining these theorist’s ideas the paper offers a conceptualisation of difference that is not the product of individual researcher identities that manifests at the point of collision with (an)other identity. Rather, difference becomes intra-actively in meeting at the crossroads where the “who” is formed. The author argues it is a configuration that cannot be known in advance, and that blurs individuals (and contingent identities) in its uniqueness. Practical implications – Although conceptual in nature, this paper can be seen as having implications for working with difference in research teams. Drawing on Todd (2003, 2011a) what becomes important in attending to difference in research teams is being openly receptive to the Other. For instance, that the differences of perspective in relation to a research project are not melted into consensus, but that the singularities are always held in relation to each-other. Originality/value – This paper takes new and emerging ideas in educational philosophy and new materialisms around relationality and applies them to a re-thinking of 'difference' in qualitative methodological literature. The result is to offer a new ontology of 'difference' as experienced by members of a qualitative research team. It also brings the work of Barad and Todd into conversation for the first time, in order to think ethically about how researchers might work with difference

Sexuality education in public schools in Australia and Aotearoa - New Zealand

This book engages contemporary debates about the notion of secularism outside of the field of education in order to consider how secularism shapes the formation of progressive sexuality education. Focusing on the US, Canada, Ireland, Aotearoa-New Zealand and Australia, this text considers the affinities, prejudices, and attachments of scholars who advocate secular worldviews in the context of sexuality education, and some of the consequences that ensue from these ways of seeing. This study identifies and interrogates how secularism infuses progressive sexuality education. It asks readers to consider their own investments in particular ways of thinking and researching in the field of sexuality education, and to think about how these investments have developed and how they shape existing discourses within the field of sexuality education. It hones in on how progressive sexuality education has come to develop in the way that it has, and how this relates to conceits of secularism. This book prompts a consideration of how 'progressive' scholarship and practice might get in the way of meaningful conversations with students, teachers, and peers who think differently about the field of sexuality education