In 2011, the California Legislature passed the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act (California Legislature, 2011) and, in doing so, became the first state in the United States and in the world to mandate public schools to teach about the role and contribution of LGBT people to national history. Since 2019, similar legislations were adopted in six other states: New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Nevada, and Connecticut. In addition, in 2018, following recommendations from the charity Time for Inclusive Education, the Scottish government issued regulations to include the teaching of the “history of LGBTI movements” in Scotland’s school curriculum (Scottish Government & Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, 2019). Indeed, since the early 2010s, the reference framework of various institutional, political and social actors has been used to construct the establishment of LGBTI inclusive school policies as a means of fighting against discrimination. These actors are:

• advocacy organisations, whether national (GLSEN in the United States, Stonewall in the United Kingdom, Time for Inclusive Education in Scotland...) or international (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation, Global Alliance for LGBT Education, OutRight Action International…);
• intergovernmental organisations, with either a global mission (UNESCO, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, World Bank, OECD…) or a regional one (Council of Europe, European Parliament, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights...).

In the case of California and Scotland, entrepreneurs have lobbied to have these recommendations transposed into local educational policies—in these specific cases, they can be considered as “norm entrepreneurs” (Sunstein, 1996, p. 909) and sometimes “identity entrepreneurs” (Martin et al., 2010, p. 85).

Anchored in the theoretical framework of the sociology of the curriculum—while borrowing elements from the sociology of social problems, on the one hand, and didactical science, on the other hand—, my paper analyses how the discourses of policy actors on LGBTQI+ issues influence not only the educational policies that are put in place, but also the teaching practices at school level. In order to characterise this influence, I propose to use the concept of regime of sexual and gender minorities’ identities, which I define as the frames within which individuals, social groups and institutions conceive the identities of individuals or groups that are socially constructed as part of “the sexual and gender minorities”.

This analysis is based on the following hypotheses:

1. The inclusion of LGBQI+ content in the school curricula is directly correlated with the construction of a social problem, which is that of discrimination and bullying against LGBTQI+ students and its consequences on their mental health (McCormack; 2020; Rofes, 2004);
2. Following Prathois and Biland (2022), who argue that discourses produced by policy actors organise and transform gender and sexuality, I hypothetised that the recommendations of intergovernmental organisations and the educational policies that these actors support are influenced by their conceptions of the rights of sexual and gender minorities (Langlois, 2019)—which I refer to as a liberal regime of sexual and gender minorities’ identities.
3. In turn, discourses produced by teachers on their representations of teaching LGBTI issues, on the one hand, and their practice, on the other hand, were assumed to be influenced by this liberal regime of sexual and gender minorities’ identities. More specifically, my hypothesis was that the approach of LGBTQI+ problematics would tend to be homogenised amongst school subjects, with an emphasis on the issue of rights, and that sexual and gender categories would be essentialised (Smestad, 2018).

My research work consisted in: - Analysing a corpus of around 50 texts produced by intergovernmental and supranational organizations which all recommend to include LGBTQI+ issues in the school curricula. This part of my research focused on European organisations, specifically the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and the European Commission, as well as advocacy organizations such as the International Lesbian and Gay Association Europe. - Analysing the discourses produced by policy stakeholders in the countries that have made it mandatory to teach the history of LGBT people. This part of my research focused on several U.S. states and Scotland; comparisons were also made with countries that made this teaching optional—such as England and Norway—and liberal countries which are reluctant to such inclusion—specifically, France. The actors whose discourses were analysed were: political actors (minutes of parliamentary debates, legislative materials…); social actors (research reports from private actors, public discourses by advocacy associations…); and institutional actors (school syllabi, guidelines for teachers, administrative guidance documents for internal use, didactic resources (co-)produced by the ministry in charge of education, related executive agencies or local school authorities). - A field survey which aimed at comparing these different discourses with teaching practices through class observations, semi-directive interviews with educational actors (teachers, teacher trainers, groups of students...), and the collection and analysis of teaching materials (school textbooks, lesson plans, course materials...) and work produced by students.

My paper highlights the following findings: - The analysis of international organisations’ discourses has confirmed that the institutional emphasis is on the rights of sexual and gender minorities. These rights are highlighted within the frame of two main fields of action: inclusive education and comprehensive sexual education. As a consequence, LGBQI+ rights tend to be associated with sexual rights and to be treated from the perspective of both biological and relationships skills, at the expense of civic and historical skills. - At a national level, my research found that the same liberal regime of sexual and gender minorities’ identity has characterised the promotion and implementation processes of LGBTI inclusive education in Scotland. This has resulted in a dilution of the issues that are central to the history of sexuality and gender, in favour of presentist social demands. - However, in the U.S. states that have made it mandatory to teach LGBT history, the situation has proved to be more complex. While promotional discourses from political and social entrepreneurs are distinctive of the liberal regime, the “transcoding” operation (Lascoumes, 1996)—which includes, but is not limited to, the external didactic transposition process (Chevallard, 1982)—that has been at play in the development of the new history curricula has had an impact on the regime of sexual and gender minorities’ identities at the teaching level, in favour of a historicist-epistemological regime (Dilthey, 1976). As a consequence, the making of the new curricula has led to a change of the “historiographical configuration” (Prost, 2006) of the teaching of LGBTQI+ issues, through the inclusion of gender and sexuality as useful categories of analysis—which, in the Banks model (2015, p. 156), corresponds to a transformative approach to inclusive curricula.

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