Environment and Social Psychology

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Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Advances and Challenges from Education for a Democratic Citizenship

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Submission deadline: 2023-12-31
Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues

Studies suggest that the hegemony of interpersonal heterosexism contributes to negative psychological outcomes, the effects of which seem to have a significant impact on students who experience marginalization due to their sexual orientation and gender identity. It seems clear that the homogeneous articulation of certain social narratives, based on binary dichotomous constructions around gender and sexual orientation, and its impact on deterministic developments of identity, drives the need to generate new social discourses based on diversity and plurality. In this sense, models of human development that integrate multiple identity processes are necessary (Hereth et al., 2020). Education for democratic citizenship, based on respect, tolerance of difference and diversity, should include teaching how to build social counter-narratives of hatred due to these characteristics (Ortega-Sánchez et al., 2021), or any other capable of limiting the identity plurality of a truly inclusive citizenship.

In this context, this Special Issue seeks to offer a diagnostic state of the relationships between discrimination, gender identity and sexual orientation in education, and to outline specific socio-educational lines of action to address them in the different educational stages.

Prof. Dr. Delfín Ortega-Sánchez

Guest Editor

Keywords

Sexual Orientation; Gender Identity; Sexual Diversity Education; LGBTIQ+; Psychosocial and Educational Factors; Education for a Democratic Citizenship

Published Paper

LGBTIQ+ education for making teaching inclusive? Voices of teachers from all around the world

Cristina A. Huertas-Abril;Francisco Javier Palacios-Hidalgo;
As the protection of the rights and integrity of LGBTIQ+ people seems to be increasing in some parts of the world, discrimination and violence towards them remain a reality in many other contexts. As a result, there is a growing number of initiatives for making education LGBTIQ+-inclusive in order to enhance educational inclusiveness and train fully prepared democratic citizens. However, research is still limited when examining the perceptions of in-service teachers regarding the appropriateness of addressing topics connected to gender identity and diversity and the reality of the LGBTIQ+ community in their lessons and their training to do so. By using a structured interview distributed online, this qualitative study explores the attitudes of 89 in-service teachers from all around the world regarding the introduction of these issues in education. Findings show that, in general, participants agree with the relevance of these issues but highlight that their sensitive nature needs to be considered. Moreover, there seems to be a lack of training in this respect, which would be appreciated. Ultimately, this article intends to expand both research and reflection on the importance of making education LGBTIQ+-inclusive as a means to promote educational inclusiveness and the training of democratic citizens of tomorrow.