Trans/gender-diverse students' perceptions of positive school climate and teacher concern as factors in school belonging : results from an Australian national study

Background/Context: In recent years, numerous, ongoing moral panics with respect to the acknowledgment of gender and sexuality diversity within curriculum/ policies have done considerable damage to Australian educators’ confidence and capacity to support gender and sexuality diverse students. Trans/gender-diverse students have been specifically targeted during this period. Purpose: Cisnormative microaggressions are a pervasive element of the Australian school climate, impacting trans/gender-diverse students’ relationships with school-based adults and peers and their experiences of schooling more broadly. This article seeks to contribute to scholarship exploring school well-being for trans/gender-diverse students, inclusive of students’ sense of their teachers’ concern for their personal and academic well-being, and its relationship to students’ perceptions of their school climate. Participants: This article explores data from trans/gender-diverse participants (n = 685) in the 2021 Free2Be. . .Yet? Australian national online survey of gender and sexuality diverse high school students in Grades/Years 7–12. Research Design: Using students’ self-reported data on selected quantitative measures of school climate with respect to gender and sexuality diversity, alongside perceptions of teacher concern and expectations for success, as selected indicators of school-based well-being, this research sought to identify these variables’ predictive impact on students’ sense of belonging at school

Free2Be... Yet?: The Second National Study of Australian High School Students Who Identify as Gender and Sexuality Diverse

Free2Be…Yet?, a follow-up to the 2015 Free2Be? report, details the findings from a second nationwide survey of gender and sexuality diverse Australian secondary school students. The name, while also intended to signal the continuation of the original line of research, was designed to highlight the central research question for teenagers: Is your school a place where it is safe for you to be yourself? Are you free to be you? As with the previous iteration of the research, the project’s core aims were to: Gain a better understanding of how gender and sexuality diverse students experience their school environment(s) with regards to treatment of gender and sexuality diversity. Investigate links between students’ reported school climate and various measures of their school wellbeing and associated academic outcomes (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:59230)

Gender and Sexuality Diversity in a Culture of Limitation

Gender and Sexuality Diversity in a Culture of Limitation provides an outstanding and insightful critique of the ways that contemporary education is impacted by a range of political, social and cultural influences that inform the approaches that schools take in relation to gender and sexuality diversity. By applying feminist poststructural and Foucauldian frameworks, the book examines the ongoing impact of broader socio-cultural discourse on the lives of gender and sexuality diverse students and teachers. Beginning with an overview of the impact of how a culture of limitation is realised in Australia, the focus moves beyond this context to examine state and federal policies from comparable societies in countries including the USA and the UK and their effect on the production of knowledges and what’s permissible to include in educational curriculum. This research-driven book thus provides a comparative, international overview of the current state of gender and sexuality diversity in schools, and convincingly demonstrates that despite some empowerment of gender and sexuality diverse individuals, silencing and marginalization remain powerful forces. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, academics, professionals, and policy makers interested in the field of gender and sexuality in education. It is essential reading for those involved in pre-service and in-service teacher education, diversity education, the sociology of education, as well as education more generally

The Elephant in the (Class)Room: Parental Perceptions of LGBTQ-inclusivity in K-12 Educational Contexts

While little is known about parental beliefs and desires regarding LGBTQ-inclusive education, assumptions about these appear to justify teachers’, curriculum writers’ and policy makers’ silences regarding sexuality and gender diversity in the K-12 classroom. Thus, in order to better inform educators’ practices, this paper presents an analysis of interview data from focus groups with parents from across the Australian state of New South Wales. Findings highlight parents’ desires for LGBTQ-inclusivity, not only as a protective factor for sexuality and gender diverse students, but also to engender social cohesion and prepare all students for adult life in the modern social landscape. Parents struggled with the complexities of promoting positive social values through compulsory content while simultaneously respecting diverse sets of values and parents’ rights to frame such topics according to a private set of beliefs. Furthermore, parents advocated for teacher training in this area and were eager for teachers and school leadership staff to feel departmentally-supported to enact LGBTQ-inclusive practices

Gender and Sexuality Diversity in a Culture of Limitation

Gender and Sexuality Diversity in a Culture of Limitation provides an outstanding and insightful critique of the ways that contemporary education is impacted by a range of political, social and cultural influences that inform the approaches that schools take in relation to gender and sexuality diversity. By applying feminist poststructural and Foucauldian frameworks, the book examines the ongoing impact of broader socio-cultural discourse on the lives of gender and sexuality diverse students and teachers. Beginning with an overview of the impact of how a culture of limitation is realised in Australia, the focus moves beyond this context to examine state and federal policies from comparable societies in countries including the USA and the UK and their effect on the production of knowledges and what’s permissible to include in educational curriculum. This research-driven book thus provides a comparative, international overview of the current state of gender and sexuality diversity in schools, and convincingly demonstrates that despite some empowerment of gender and sexuality diverse individuals, silencing and marginalization remain powerful forces. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, academics, professionals, and policy makers interested in the field of gender and sexuality in education. It is essential reading for those involved in pre-service and in-service teacher education, diversity education, the sociology of education, as well as education more generally

Gender Equity in Melbourne's Select Entry High School (SEHS) System

This research paper reports on findings from a comprehensive synthesis of research related to gender and Melbourne’s system of Select Entry High Schools (SEHS). The research described in this report was commissioned and funded by the Department of Education and Training, Victoria, with industry partners Portable and Huddle. This research is situated within a larger project entitled: Gender Equity - Consultation and Codesign. The report synthesises previous research in the field, alongside reflections on new data collected over 2021/2022 from students, parents and educators from both within, and in proximity to, the SEHS system, with the aim of generating original, empirically-driven recommendations for policy and practice in the area of SEHS entrance for young women. The project aimed to better understand and address the drivers of gender disparity for high performing girls at SEHS in Victoria, given the larger proportions of male-identifying students and the subsequent gender imbalance present within the system. As feminist gender scholars whose research engages with gender identities and sexuality, the authors acknowledge the complexities inherent to discussions of gender identities. Therefore, throughout the report, we use a range of socio-linguistic terms to represent gender. As the codesign workshops themselves did not explore gender identity, we cannot know how the participants understood their gender identities. To reflect this we have used the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in order to engage with gender disparity, and also the terms ‘female identifying’ and ‘male identifying’ and ‘girl identified’ and ‘boy identified’ to attempt to capture some of the nuances of contemporary gender identities (see, for example, Miller, 2016; Zimman, 2009)

What Parents Want: Talking about Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools: A Portfolio of Professional Learning Resources for Educators

This output is a portfolio of research-based documents developed from the ARC-funded research "Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools: Parental Experiences" (DP18). The portfolio of materials is designed to raise educators' awareness about gender and sexuality diversity, including what Australian public school parents want in terms of inclusion of this topic area in the curriculum and the experiences of parents of gender and sexuality diverse students. The portfolio includes a Facilitator Booklet for in-school training, a Participant Booklet for (teacher/educator) participants; Infographics which visually disseminate the quant/qual findings; and a Playscript which is the basis for the "What Parents Want" 45-min film, a verbatim piece crafted using the words of participating parents

Inclusive pedagogies for transgender and gender diverse children : parents' perspectives on the limits of discourses of bullying and risk in schools

This paper reports on an Australian national investigation of parents of school-aged children attending government schools. The research objective was to ascertain what parents thought in relation to gender and sexuality diversity-related content inclusions in the curriculum, and how a subset of these parents who had a gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) child, experience the public education system for/with their child. Here, we particularly focus on the voices of parents with a transgender or gender-diverse (TGD) child. We examine how these young people are positioned in discourses of risk and safety and how discrimination is depoliticised through bullying discourse. We note how bullying is framed as individualised, leaving broader cisnormative discourses unquestioned. A pedagogy of containment places the burden of gender identity, relationship management and education on the TGD student and family, highlighting a need for more professional development of school personnel

Masculinism, institutional violence and #metoo: Understanding Australian university responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

This article offers an analysis of data from the project Sexism, Higher Education, and Covid-19: The Australian Perspective. The authors argue that the gendered impact of the pandemic in Higher Education Institutions constitutes a form of institutionally perpetrated sexist harassment, and that raising awareness of the ways in which institutions themselves enable and perpetrate such harassment is consistent with the aims of the #MeToo movement. This article is intended to act as testament to the ways in which Australian universities function as masculinist institutions that, during this time of crisis, deployed tactics that were experienced by women and minority-identifying research participants as sexist and violent. The article illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and university responses to it, are evidence of the everyday sexual violence that women and gender-diverse academics experience due to inherent norms about the labour that ‘counts’ in the masculinist, neoliberal academy

Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools: Parental Experiences and Schooling Responses: Victoria Snapshot Report

This Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project (DP180101676) examined parents’ perspectives on the in/exclusion of gender and sexuality diversity (GSD) in public school curriculum. Findings from the GSDS national survey of Australian parents of K-12 government school students were isolated to the 604 (28.9%) parents who resided in the state of Victoria (VIC)