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

enhanced my work because it provided me with a longer term retrospective view on
experiences of queerphobia at school.
Interview with Gay Teacher:
I planned to run two focus groups, one comprised of young LGBT people and one of
adults working in education. In order to recruit this second focus group I devised a poster
advertising my research and asking for volunteers (Appendix 16). This was sent to 120
secondary schools across Yorkshire via a regular postal mail-out from the Education
Department at Leeds University, along with a cover letter (Appendix 17), giving details
about my work and advising the recipient of where to display the poster. I felt this would
be a successful way of widely distributing information about my study to people working
in education. I had anticipated a small response given the nature of the research and what
I knew about schools’ attitudes to these issues. I received zero responses. I can only
speculate on why this was and cannot gauge an accurate response rate from the poster, as
I do not know how many posters were placed on school notice boards.
After this unsuccessful recruitment I instead conducted one individual interview with a
lesbian teacher, sought through personal contacts. I devised the interview schedule in the
same way I had for the stakeholders, tailoring it specifically towards teachers (Appendix
18). I employed the same flexible approach, for the same reasons, as with previous
interviews conducted; her identity was anonymized and she filled in a background
information sheet and signed a consent form (Appendix 19).