Description
LGBTQ+ secondary school students experience significant disparities in feelings of unsafety compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers (Myers et al., 2020). Through the development of school-based targeted strategies, multiple efforts have been made over the last 30 years to decrease these disparities. Often, the importance of “safety” for this disproportionately targeted group of students is emphasized; however, our current understanding of whether students in schools with such strategies actually feel safer is limited (Sadowski, 2016; Poteat et al., 2021).The first presenter, who has a background in youth development, will share insights from the meta-analysis she conducted on the association between school-based LGBTQ+ targeted strategies and students’ feelings of school safety. In brief, the overall mean correlations showed positive effects for all strategies. However, all correlations between the strategies and feelings of school safety were weak. Does this mean that the strategies are not creating the optimal school environments to benefit this diverse population of students, or could it be that we are measuring the wrong effects?
To reflect on these questions, the second presenter, who comes from the history of education research field, will present a historical perspective on these targeted strategies. She offers a possible explanation for why emphasizing “safety” in these strategies may no longer serve LGBTQ+ students’ needs today (Sadowski, 2016). Additionally, critical factors specific to the school environment, such as the persistent institutional structure of schools (Tyack & Cuban, 1996) and their tendency to reinforce stigmatized social conditions for diverse student populations (Kleinman, 2000) likely play a role in how effective these safety strategies can actually be in the schooling context. In this interdisciplinary conversation, we will discuss the issue of feelings of unsafety for LGBTQ+ secondary school students, and see what answers may lie in the space where these two research fields meet.
| Periode | 8-dec.-2023 |
|---|---|
| Evenementstitel | LGBTQ+ Research Day |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Locatie | Utrecht, NetherlandsToon op kaart |