Non-Normative Gender and Sexual Identities in Schools: - Schools Out

Methodology
Research Context
My review of literature demonstrates that schools may not be providing environments
conducive to healthy development for LGBT young people. Furthermore, it shows it is
vital to look at gendered and sexualised meanings and difference in order to understand
discrimination and enable platforms for change. As such, my research investigates how
young LGBT people view their gender and/or sexual identity development within school
contexts. I explore the effects of young LGBT people’s experiences at school and
investigate what should be happening in schools and what is actually happening. I was
motivated to undertake this research initially by personal experiences of homophobia 24 at
school, and secondly by reading the School Report (Hunt and Jensen, 2007), which
highlights the lack of progress in challenging queerphobia in the ten years since I left
school (see Chapter One).
Previous work in this area has focussed on the types and extent of queerphobic bullying
(see Chapter One) and
there is a lack of focus on how this queerphobia is affecting
young LGBT people, with the notable exception of Rivers’ work (Rivers, 2000; 2004).
There is also a lack of focus within previous work on the prevalence of heteronormativity
in schools and how this is affecting young LGBT people. However, some work has
subconsciously started to investigate these issues by interrogating the social construction
of gender and the discursive productions of femininities and masculinities, which
24 Note I use the term homophobia, not queerphobia, when referring to my own experiences as these were
homophobic only.