Can one person make a change? Testing whole school approach for creating safe school environment for LGBTQ students in Ukraine

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Improving School Experience for LGBTQ+ Students: Lessons from International and Transcultural Spaces

Proposal

Background and relevance of the topic.

By 2022, LGBTQ people in Ukraine still face discrimination and homo- and transphobic violence. After homosexuality had been decriminalized in 1991, the government did little to protect the human rights of LGBTQ Ukrainians; despite constant pressure from international organizations, all the work to promote inclusion for LGBTQ people in the country is done by non-governmental organizations and human rights activists (Shevtsova 2022; Martsenyuk 2012). In the situation, when all the major political parties avoid openly supporting any advancements toward equality for LGBTQ people, initiating a public discussion of the problems LGBTQ minors face and changing existing policies on education is particularly challenging.
According to the data from national school environment surveys conducted in Ukraine in 2017 and 2020, the school remains a rather unsafe place for LGBTQ students in all Ukrainian cities. As of 2020, 44% of Ukrainian LGBTQ teenagers did not feel safe at school because of their sexual orientation and 28% feel the same way because of their gender expression. 47% of LGBTQ students have to deal with physical harassment at school and more than 60% reported that they have heard homo- and transphobic comments from their teachers or school administration (TERGO 2021). This leads to a significant decrease in students’ educational attainments and psychological well-being, the respondents reported a higher level of depression, skipping classes, and lower level of ambition to continue education after graduation from school as compared to their peers who do not face similar treatment at school. At the same time, the research demonstrated that the presence of even one supportive adult at schools, such as a teacher or a psychologist, has a significant positive impact on LGBTQ students. Nevertheless, more than 60% of respondents reported that there were no such supportive educators at their schools.

Addressed problem.

The present project addresses the problem of creating a safe and healthy school environment in Ukraine and the need of raising awareness and train educators, school administration, and social pedagogues in Ukraine. It discusses the challenges related to conducting research in Ukrainian secondary schools, with both teachers and minors, against the background of competing values in the country where conservative groups and the Church are gaining more power. The paper also provides some insights on values and attitudes to gender and sexuality within Ukrainian schools. Finally, it compares two approaches to the education of the teachers tested in 2019/2020: individual vs. whole school approach.

Methodology.

The paper uses mixed methods drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2018 – 2021. The quantitative data was collected through an online survey designed for Ukrainian secondary school students who attended a school in Ukraine in 2019/2020 and identified as LGBTQ persons. The report contains more than 1700 valid responses. The qualitative data were collected using three main methods, namely, participant observation, written anonymous surveys conducted before and after the intervention (two-day training for the secondary school teachers and school administration), and six focus groups with secondary school teachers. The teachers for focus groups and training were selected randomly from various parts of Ukraine and from different types of schools, such as private schools, schools in rural areas, and specialized and ordinary public schools in bigger and smaller cities, which allows speaking of a representative sample.

Preliminary findings.

The paper demonstrates that the Ukrainian secondary education system so far remains deeply gendered and heteronormative and, thus, presents a tough case for introducing new sensitive topics, such as sexual orientation and gender identity. It argues that while the short-term results of both approaches were rather similar, from a long-term perspective, the whole-school approach is more sustainable. It also shows the importance of having supportive and informed teachers and school staff and administration for the psychological well-being of LGBTQ students as well as for their educational attainments.

Project’s impact.

The expected impact of the project includes several aspects. First, the project results shed some light on the values and attitudes of secondary school teachers and administration in Ukraine regarding LGBTQ students and issues of sexual orientation and gender identity overall. Second, the results can serve advocacy purposes to promote the ideas of empowering more inclusive education and creating a safe school environment for LGBTQ students in Ukrainian schools. Third, the project results can be used for similar projects in other countries in the region with similar schooling systems as a model to improve the system to be safer and healthier for all kinds of students. Finally, the findings are useful for identifying the most efficient approaches and for developing new approaches and instruments to train educators and school administration.

Challenges to address.

Against the backdrop of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, new challenges related to this research project have emerged and I hope that my participation at CIES 2023 and presenting this paper will help me to address those. The main challenge is related to the continuity of awareness-raising campaigns and training for teachers in times of ongoing military conflict. This paper briefly discusses an online alternative that was developed in the COVID times and is being used by the teachers in 2022, too, however, there is a need to address the risks and ethical considerations related to online education of the teachers, too. Furthermore, there is a need for new research that would examine the psychological well-being of Ukrainian LGBTQ teenagers during the months of the war; this includes students who moved abroad with their families, were displaced within Ukraine, and those who stayed in their cities (some of them occupied by Russia). Finally, there is a challenge of dealing with the local and national educational authorities (including the Ministry of Education) that turned out to be even less cooperative under the martial law.

Author

• Maryna Shevtsova, Filozofska fakulteta, University of Ljubljana VAT No. SI55382657