Increasing Competence and Overcoming Fear: A Case for LGBTQ-Inclusive Multicultural Education

• In Event: 16.038 - Shifting Policy Approaches to "Safe" Schooling: Preparing Preservice Teachers to Understand and Address Systemic Marginalizations

Abstract

Queer youth stand to reap enormous benefits from having educators who are informed about gender and sexual diversity, heteronormativity, and gender-equitable approaches to curriculum and instruction. However, “negative attitudes toward LGBT people are prevalent among pre-service and licensed teachers” to a greater extent than in the population at large (Macgillivray & Jennings, 2008, p. 170). Educator preparation programs have opportunities to disrupt this pattern, but teacher candidates are typically not required to reflect on the likelihood that they will be working with LGBTQ or gender non-conforming children or parents, and even fewer to gain tools to be successful when it occurs. If and how these issues are addressed in Schools of Education varies by geography, accreditation agency requirements, and the expertise and values of faculty (Authors, 2012). When included, LGBTQ identities often appear in education foundations textbooks under topics such suicide, depression, or sexually transmitted disease, which narrowly defines these students as victims or at-risk youth in need of protection or therapeutic intervention. Further, many texts provide incorrect definitions for sexual orientation and gender identity, and they rarely explain what it means to be transgender (Jennings & Macgillivray, 2011, p. 54). Given the lack of clarity and the reliance on deficit frameworks at the level of state education policy in most states, it is unsurprising that research consistently confirms that LGBTQ topics receive little or no attention in teacher preparation programs (Athanases & Larrabee, 2003; Jennings & Macgillivray, 2011; Macgillivray & Jennings, 2008; Sherwin & Jennings, 2006).

In this paper, the authors draw connections between the body of scholarship that has exposed educator preparation programs’ failure to integrate LGBTQ content, New York educators’ perspectives about their preparedness to address school issues related to gender and sexual diversity in order to develop recommendations for strengthening multicultural teacher education in New York educator preparation programs. All data were collected via semi-structured interviews (Carspecken, 1996; Patton, 2001), and all participants are educators in upstate New York. Interviews ranged in length from 45 minutes to two hours with questions focused on the educator’s personal experience with LGBTQ students, their perceptions of their school’s success in supporting LGBTQ students, and their recommendations for information educators need to receive in their training to feel prepared to supporting LGBTQ students.

Findings indicate that educators experience fear of the unknown when faced with the responsibility of supporting LGBTQ students. Educators reported that they were anxious, felt unprepared, and feared negative professional consequences for openly supporting LGBTQ students and families—particularly transgender students. We argue that educators’ fear and anxiety closely related to their lack of knowledge about gender and sexual differences and that educator preparation programs have a significant role to play in preparing educators to make pedagogical decisions in the interest of disrupting the systemic marginalization of LGBTQ students and creating school environments that value and affirm a broader range of identities. We will conclude with recommendations for developing statewide multicultural education requirements to integrate issues of gender and sexuality throughout their programs of study.

Author

• Melissa J. Smith, University of Central Arkansas