Support for Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Youth in Schools Through Community Programs

• In Event: Transgender Studies in K–12 Education: Mapping an Agenda for Research and Practice

Abstract

Transgender students in K-12 schools experience a negative school climate and feel unsafe in school due to their gender expression and/or sexual orientation, which challenge the heteronormative school environment (Goodenow and Blake, 2013; Greytak et al., 2016). Additionally, research on interventions designed to support lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youth in schools (e.g. Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) have not been shown to directly benefit transgender students because they may not address issues of gender, transitioning, activism, and/or curriculum tied to the experience of identifying as transgender, gender creative, gender non-binary, etc (McGuire et al., 2010). Ultimately the negative school climate and lack of social/support programs specifically for transgender youth may serve to push them out of school into community-based programs and services that do a better job of addressing the specific education, health and well-being needs of transgender students.

This paper synthesizes scholarly publications and grey literature on community programs and services for transgender youth in the US and Canada, focusing on models of support used in out-of-school settings and the ways community programs and services address school-based harassment, dropping out and changing schools. To address the gap in literature on community programs for TGN youth we used an environmental scan approach to identify the frequency and types of community programs available for TGN youth in North America. We used a directed content analysis to understand how the concept of support is used in program descriptions (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Programs included in this study met the following criteria: specific to transgender and gender non-conforming youth; group programs, not one-on-one support; included school age youth (ages 12–19); and had program information available on websites.

The study results were far-ranging. A small portion of the programs (13) offered identity-specific programing, based on gender, race, or religion. Only eighteen programs indicated that a trans-facilitator ran the program. The presence of transgender or gender non-conforming facilitators also mapped onto how and if programs defined support. Of the 18 programs with TGN facilitators, 39% mentioned and defined support in their project description. These findings suggest that the specificity of program descriptions are connected to the presence of TGM facilitators. The authors conclude with a discussion of the way community programs and services for transgender youth can inform the development of more equitable approaches to teaching and learning for transgender youth in schools.

Authors

• Lance Trevor McCready, University of Toronto

• Montrose Neufeld, University of Toronto