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

Questions:
Having reviewed existing literature and with consideration of my research limits, I
developed five central research questions. These were:
What impact does explicit queerphobia in schools have on young LGBT people?
What impact does the heteronormative school culture have on young LGBT people?
What practical impact are current policies aimed at tackling queerphobia having in schools?
What is the current climate in schools for LGBT teachers, how does this affect them and their
pupils?
What are the effects of binary gender differentiation on the identity development of LGBT
young people?
Stakeholder Interviews:
I met my stakeholders in London on 11 th June 2008 and used the same semi-structured
interview schedules to conduct both interviews (Appendix 10). These schedules were
based on twelve open ended questions aiming to cover my five central research questions.
I used a flexible, free association approach (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000), making notes
throughout to help guide the discussion and pick up on interesting points raised. I
concluded my interview with Sue over the phone on 25th June, as she had limited time on
the 11th and we did not cover everything in that time. Limited time combined with
extensive knowledge was one of the main issues with these interviews, particularly given
the limited time I had to analyse data. I therefore, had to remain cautious to keep
interviews relevant to the present work. Chris and Sue both signed consent forms
(Appendix 11); their identities were not anonymized as they are key figures in the field
and were happy to have their names associated with this research.