LGBTQ+ Representation in Education

There is current debate surrendering policies in primary education on whether to allow LGBTQ+ material in history and social science classes or not. Some deem it as liberal indoctrination, inappropriate for children, too difficult and complex to teach, or disrespectful to religious students and families. Others see the implementation of LGBTQ+ representation in education as productive, inclusive, diverse, and vital for students to learn in order to expand their knowledge of types of people, allow them to understand themselves and one another better, and create a supportive, accepting environment. After researching current legislation and the benefits and concerns of implementing LGBTQ+ education, as well as reading of the wants, needs, and emotions of the parties involved in this conflict. The information has been compiled into a website with blog posts detailing the effects of LGBTQ+ representation on students and parents, and how schools and policies relate to this issue. These blog posts aim to inform students, parents, school employees, and any other readers on LGBTQ+ representation in the educational system and approach it considering the concerns of both supporters and deniers equally.

Hi my name is Isabella Roman. Hi, my name is Skyler Lee. I’m Cameron Hunt and not present with us today but editing our video is Emma Ealley. So, in our Honors 130 project we were assigned to research an identity conflict because our class is Resolving Identity Conflict and so the topic we chose to do is LGBTQ plus Representation in Education. So, there’s current debate in the United States right now on the representation of the LGBTQ plus community in local education should be promoted or avoided altogether. Studies showed that students feel safer when seeing their identities represented in school curriculum but there is parent and administration pushback due to conflicting values. So, many teachers feel hesitant to approach the topic because it could have a very significant impact on their careers, so this conflict mainly boils down to conformity versus diversity and identity and self-expression. In our conflict analysis we identified main interests and needs as well as positions. So in our interests and needs we identified things like self-expression, representation, conformity and autonomy as well as things like access to information, healthcare, and safety. We identified major positions being Pro-LGBTQ plus representation groups, Anti-LGBTQ plus representation groups and third parties. All right and now we move on to the categorization and complexity of the parties involved. In this slide we’ve included the grassroots level of parties involved such as parents, students, and teachers and more. Each group can essentially be split into Pro-LGBTQ plus supporters and Anti-LGBTQ plus supporters, however parents hold the most variation in terms of relevant positions for this conflict. It should be considered that there are parents who may have children who are part of the LGBTQ plus community and this may affect their positions, priorities, and interests. Next slide please. And as you can probably tell, the situation is very complex. There are many ways to break down the parties and each have their own needs wants and desires, although these mostly overlap. There’s also division within those parties due to different patterns of thinking and the knowledge that they have on various topics. This would be due to cognitive bias, which essentially means that your brain is confronted with two very different perceived truths and thus, cannot decide which is actually true. Positioning is whichever side the a person chooses to align with in a particular conflict. And cognitive bias and positioning in an argument lead to dehumanization on both sides there are the immediate biases that are based on emotion but there are also deeper biases that lead someone to disregard information that does not fit with what they already know or believe about something. All this leads to one side being considered less than human for their beliefs and position which is dehumanization. Next slide please. Our group has created a conflict map for our project that includes the other parties involved, more than just the grassroots parties listed in our conflict analysis. this map includes the middle-range and top-range leaders as well as the parties of the grassroots we already mentioned as well as delving into each party’s interests, needs, values, and rights, which is linked in our website. Next slide please. Alrighty, to address this situation we came up with an advocacy plan. Our plan was to create a blog educating the public on the importance and key elements of LGBTQ plus representation in primary education. As a result, we created this website on Google sites; we had four blog posts “How to Implement LGBTQ Representation,” “The Importance of Representation,” “The Role of Parents”nd “Schools and Curriculums.” The main goal of this was for people, at least a couple people, to read it and just kind of understand the other view, even if they don’t necessarily agree, just to understand that this topic is a lot more complex than it looks on the surface. As a result, one of the biggest challenges for this situation as a whole was trying to remain neutral. We all hold an opinion on this, we’re all cognitively biased towards one party, and so to be able to split those apart and write concisely in a neutral position was very hard. although it did allow us to learn to mediate between others in ways that involve all of the parties involved. And that was our project for our student advocacy. Thank you so much for watching!