"Sometimes It's Hard to Do the Right Thing": Administrators' Sense-Making of Gender Identity Laws and the Implications of Understanding State Policies

• In Event: Distributed Leadership for Social Justice in Diverse Localities: The Politics and Pedagogy of Place

Abstract

An essential role of K12 superintendents, principals, and other administrators is to ensure local districts adhere to state laws. This paper traces administrators' knowledge about the law, the perceived relevance to their local contexts, and the sources guiding their knowledge about the law. In order to implement any social justice policy reforms, administrators must know the reform initiative exists, understand the goals and target of the reform, and have the resources to achieve these goals (Ball, 1993; Cohen and Mehta, 2017; Hill, 2001). Legal counsel and intermediary agencies often support leaders with new policy reforms (Spillane, 2004), but few researchers have examined how these resources shape leaders’ perceptions of the laws concerning transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) students.

Using Illinois as a case study, this paper draws on organizational and critical trans theories to explore K12 administrators’ understanding of educational reforms concerning TGNC students in a state with legislative antidiscrimination and antibullying protections for transgender students. We examine: 1) Whether K12 superintendents, principals, and other administrators believe they have TGNC students in their school, 2) Whether administrators know about existing state and local protections for TGNC students, and 3) The role of legal counsel and intermediary agencies in guiding administrators’ sensemaking of state law.

Using interview data from 29 Illinois district-level administrators across the state, the research team used inductive and deductive coding (Charmaz, 2006; Corbin & Strauss, 1998) to assess whether leaders knew about existing state laws, local policies, and TGNC students in their school and factors influencing administrators’ sensemaking process.

Contrary to the existing literature (Payne & Smith, 2018; Woolley, 2019), all administrators in a diverse sample of districts acknowledged TGNC youth in their schools and the relevance of laws concerning TGNC students, but varied in their understanding of the legal protections TGNC students had. Almost half of the administrators had no, minimal, or incorrect knowledge of state policy protections (48%), while 24% had an in-depth understanding of the state laws and local policy protections. Leaders referenced state school board association’s policy and administrative procedures templates, but most leaders did not recall embedded stipulations or administrative options. Administrators also reported legal counsel cautioning them about ambiguity in Federal discrimination laws, which contributed to confusion about leaders’ responsibility to protect TGNC students.

Protective laws and policies have the potential to support systemic reform and disrupt inequalities, both themes of this conference, but administrators won’t implement reforms concerning TGNC students if leaders don’t know relevant laws exist. Even in a state with clear state protections for TGNC students, the Federal policy landscape contributed to confusion and misunderstandings about the protections for TGNC students embedded in the state educational code. These misconceptions point to the need for multiple layers of support to ensure policy implementation, such as networks of peers or learning communities committed to implementing reforms and inclusivity professional development for educators and legal professionals. This description of administrators’ sensemaking in a state with existing legal protections for TGNC students also contributes to a better understanding of potential barriers to implementing future Federal and state legislative reform concerning TGNC youth.

Authors

• Mollie McQuillan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Janel Anderson, Gonzaga University

• Lucy Sieber, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Lydia Gandy-Fastovich, University of Utah