Teachers: Key to Ending Homophobic Bullying in Schools - Research Paper

Introduction

Most teachers are not trained to deal with LGBTQ youth and this perpetuates homophobic bullying. One of the repercussions of homophobic bullying is to create a feeling of isolation within the school community, among LGBTQ students. Teachers can become an important source of support and confidants for some students (Boyland et al., 2016). Teachers can reverse this trend by setting an example and maintaining a climate of security consistently and permanently. They can also promote friendships and networks that will help LGBTQ students gain social support and develop a sense of inclusion and belonging with peers (Coulter & Miller, 2018). For example, they can support the efforts of students wishing to create a gay-straight alliance group or inclusion clubs-LGBTQ created by students and offer to collaborate with students wishing to set up one of these. groups. However, to do all this, they need to be trained in supporting and engaging LGBTQ youth. The current research paper will thus investigate high school administrator and educator training to engage and support LGBTQ youth.

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Purpose of The Study

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate high school administrator and educator training to engage and support LGBTQ youth. The study will also investigate the challenges that LQBTQ youths face in schools and how teachers can solve the problem. It will be a qualitative research study that will delve deeper into the problems faced by LQBTQ students and how educator training can help in solving these problems. Regarding the study design, it will be descriptive research that will provide information, and testing of the hypothesis will be after analysing and synthesizing data. The constructs of the study will be educator training, its importance, and support for LGBTQ youths. Questionnaires will be sent to five schools to 30 educators, these questionnaires will be sent online. Systematic sampling will be used to select the 30 respondents (total sample size).

The data collection method will be through questionnaires with open (which are those that ask the respondent to answer in their own words) and closed-ended questions (the respondents will select the answer from a 5-Likert scale. The questionnaire is a useful and effective means of collecting information in a relatively short time. It requires less effort on the part of the respondents, it limits the sample responses, it is easy to fill, it keeps the subject on the subject, it is relatively objective and provides more in-depth responses, and it is easy to classify and analyze (Vealey, 2019). Data analysis will be performed through content analysis and the main software used will be NVivo. NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software tool mainly used in qualitative and mixed-methods research.

The study results will be highly crucial and they will inform educational practice in several ways. A school is one of the main spaces of formation for citizenship and socialization of children, adolescents, and young people. However, schools are not always able to deal with differences, in particular with issues related to sexuality and sexual orientation. This difficulty has serious consequences for all students, impairing their learning and well-being. It also prevents the school from adequately performing one of its most important social functions today: contributing to the strengthening in the society of a culture that knows how to respect and value diversity. Teachers can play a great role in eliminating prejudiced attitudes towards LGBTQ youths and this can only be achieved through effective teacher training.

Research Questions

The problem is that currently, many LGBTQ students are facing a lot of prejudice and bullying, and educators are not properly trained to know how to deal and eliminate the problem. Consequently, the purpose of this qualitative research is to investigate high school administrator and educator training to engage and support LGBTQ youth. The study will establish training techniques that educators need to use to eliminate the prejudice faced by these students. Two main research questions will guide the current study.

Research Question 1: What is the importance of educator training in engaging and supporting LGBTQ youth and what should the training entail?

Null Hypothesis 1: With proper training, educators will be fully equipped to engage and support LGBTQ youth.Alternative Hypothesis: Without proper training, educators will not be fully equipped to engage and support LGBTQ youth.

Data: Will use primary and secondary sources of data. Primary data will be from the questionnaires while secondary data will be from books, journals, and theses among others.

Variables: The main variables will be educator training and success in engaging and supporting LGBTQ youth.

Permission: Permission will only be sought from the respondents. They will be informed about the research and its benefits, for participants that will not provide their consent, they will not be forced to participate.

Research Question 2: How do school educators describe factors facilitating and impeding training and advocacy for and with LGBTQ students?

Data: Will use primary and secondary sources of data. Primary data will be from the questionnaires while secondary data will be from books, journals, and theses among others.

Variables: The main variables will be educator challenges impeding training and advocacy for LGBTQ youth.

Permission: Permission will only be sought from the respondents. They will be informed about the research and its benefits, for participants that will not provide their consent, they will not be forced to participate.

Methods and Designs

The main research method used will be a qualitative research technique. The research tool will be survey questionnaires. Qualitative techniques are extremely useful when a subject is too complex to be answered with a simple 'yes or no' hypothesis. These types of research are much easier to plan and implement; they are also useful when budgetary decisions have to be taken into account (Connelly, 2016). The wider field covered by these designs ensures that some useful data is always generated, while an unproven hypothesis in a quantitative experiment may mean that a lot of time has been lost. Qualitative methods do not depend as much on sample size as quantitative methods; for example, a case study can produce significant results with a small sample group. The questionnaire is a set of questions designed to generate the data necessary to achieve the proposed objectives of the research project. The questionnaire allows the researcher to standardize and integrate the data collection process.

Data will be collected through questionnaire surveys. The questionnaire survey is a methodological observation tool that includes a set of questions linked in a structured and logical manner. The objective of questionnaire surveys is to observe, analyze, and understand a trend, global behavior, a phenomenon thanks to the data collected. These surveys are submitted collectively to be representative and to obtain usable figures (Choudhury, 2020). This type of survey aims to obtain quantifiable and comparable statistical data on a specific population. For this, the questionnaire is administered to a representative sample of the target population, that is to say to a group whose size is sufficient, in terms of the number of individuals so that the answers given are representative of the overall opinion of this population.

This tool has many advantages, which is why it is widely used and popular in the sciences. Some advantages of the questionnaire are: it is simple to set up and generally inexpensive, especially since the democratization of the online questionnaire, its ability to provide information on a greater number of people in a fairly short period, and the ease of obtaining, quantifying, analyzing and interpreting the data (Choudhury, 2020). Due to its administration, problems may arise related to the quantity and quality of the data intended to be obtained for the study. Some problems associated with sending the questionnaires could be that they were not returned, the respondents can avoid answering some questions or not give the necessary importance to the questions provided. These problems will be solved by sending the questionnaires to large sample size.

Although the objective of the study is to know the opinion of respondents more comprehensively, studying the entire population is not feasible. This would take a long time, high investments, and, even so, it would be impossible to guarantee that all respondents will answer the questionnaires. These are some of the reasons why sampling is important. In a very simplified way, the sample is a representative part of the population to be researched. It will ensure that the results obtained by the qualitative research are valid and can be projected to the public. Consequently, the sample size will consist of 30 educators from five main educational institutions. Systematic sampling, which is a probabilistic sample method that selects individuals from an already determined population, will be used (Etikan & Bala, 2017). In the systematic sample, the elements to be researched are divided into numerically equal groups, thus, after this segmentation, a starting point is defined to establish a number that will be repeated, in sequence, within all determined groups until all sampling is selected. As such, six educators will be selected from each school. Systematic sampling is quick to perform, and due to the criterion of separation by groups, the representativeness factor becomes more effective.

References

Abreu, R. L., Black, W. W., Mosley D. V. & Fedewa, A. L. (2016). LGBTQ youth bullying experiences in schools: The role of school counselors within a system of oppression. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 11(3-4), 325-342. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2016.1214092

Boyland, L. G., Swensson, J., Ellis, J. G., Coleman, L. L., & Boyland, M. I. (2016). Principals can and should make a positive difference for LGBTQ students. Journal of Leadership Education, 15(4), 117-131. https://doi.org/1012806/V15/14/A1.

Choudhury, A. (2020). Questionnaire Method of Data Collection: Advantages and Disadvantages. Retrieved from https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/social-research/data-collection/questionnaire-method-of-data-collection-advantages-and-disadvantages/64512 .Accessed online from 6 June 2020.