Recent years have seen increasing global attention to the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students (Kosciw and Pizmony-Levy 2016; UNESCO 2021). As one strategy for making schools more inclusive, activists have advocated for LGBT themes to be included in curriculum (Camicia 2016). Accordingly, some governments have passed LGBT-inclusive curriculum mandates. For example, the 2010 Equality Act in the United Kingdom mandates that schools teach about same-sex relationships as part of students’ Relationship and Sex Education curriculum (U.K. Department for Education 2014). In the United States, seven states have passed LGBT-inclusive history education mandates, which require, for example, that schools “accurately portray political, economic, and social contributions” of LGBT people (New Jersey Senate Bill 1569 2019).

Like many curriculum reform laws, these mandates have been controversial—particularly in diverse communities. In 2019, predominantly Muslim parents in Birmingham, England protested daily for 12 weeks in response to curriculum that taught about same-sex parent families (Parveen 2019). Also in 2019, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, more than 700 parents—including Coptic Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Evangelicals—signed a petition protesting NJ 1659, which mandates teaching LGBT history. Amidst these larger protests, this study seeks to understand how educators are navigating these complex disagreements in their everyday teaching and interactions. Accordingly, we are conducting a comparative case study of two LGBT-inclusive curriculum mandates implemented in 2019: one nation-wide mandate in the United Kingdom, and one state-wide mandate in New Jersey. Our research questions are as follows:

RQ #1: What do educators include in LGBT-inclusive curriculum, and why?

RQ #2: How do teachers navigate potentially competing goals: teaching about diversity and equality on one hand, and being culturally responsive to their communities on the other hand?

In order to explore these questions, we use curriculum document analysis and educator interviews (see below). Comparing these dynamics in the U.S. and U.K. will enable us to analyze how differing political, demographic, and historical contexts shape the implementation of LGBT curriculum.

Protest against inclusive curricular reforms is nothing new (Figueroa 2003; Petrzela 2015; Zimmerman 2022). The protests against LGBT-inclusive curriculum, however, take a different tone. Rather than debating whether certain minority groups should be included in the national narrative, protesters against LGBT-inclusive curriculum often claim that the reforms violate their religious rights, that they seek to “make kids gay,” or that they inappropriately expose children to sexually explicit content (Nash and Browne 2021). Another key difference is that while majority populations cannot deny the existence of ethnic minority groups in their country (although they may downplay their importance), some anti-LGBT protesters deny the existence of LGBT peoples or claim that they have chosen a transgressive lifestyle that should not be recognized (Camicia 2016; Collins 2006). This case reveals a complex example of competing claims for state recognition by minorities (King and Samii 2020; Kymlicka 2007). While LGBT populations seek recognition via inclusion in the curriculum, some religious groups claim that learning LGBT history violates their rights.

In the midst of these debates, it is crucial to understand how educators—including curriculum writers, administrators, and teachers—grapple with these contradictions. Educators serve as intermediaries between the state and students, translating broad mandates into daily lesson plans. By investigating their thought processes and decision making, this study can provide insights into the possibilities and constraints of diversity and inclusion-based curricular mandates. As such, it aligns well with the ECER conference theme of “The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research” by delving into the contradictions of teaching pluralist ideals in diverse societies.

We use a comparative case study methodology (Bartlett and Vavrus 2016) to examine how educators navigate LGBT curriculum reforms in two settings: Birmingham, England and Jersey City, New Jersey. We have chosen these cities strategically to examine how teachers who work with diverse groups of families—which vary by immigrant status, ethnicity, and religion—are navigating the complex debates related to new LGBT curriculum. The U.S. and U.K. are at the forefront of LGBT curricular reform; comparing them will allow us to better understand how different contexts shape curricular implementation and community responses. Moreover, the timing of our study will capture the important first years of these curriculum mandates, as educators are translating policies into lessons and community members are responding to changes. Document Analysis In order to understand how educators are translating LGBT curriculum mandates into specific classroom lessons, we collected 89 LGBT-related lesson plans from the U.S. and 42 from the U.K. (total = 131). The lesson plans are created by outside organizations, which teachers often rely on to implement new curriculum mandates (e.g., in the U.S., GLSEN, History Unerased; and in the U.K., No Outsiders, Schools OUT). To gain an overall picture of the lesson plans, we organized them by country, intended age group, and main topic. Using the qualitative software Dedoose, we coded lesson plans by topic categories, such as role models; legal cases; social movements/protests; PRIDE events; symbols/flags; art, literature, and media; civic spaces; families; and self-expression/identity. Additionally, we are currently coding the narratives that are woven through lesson plans, such as persecution, resilience, progress, individualism, celebration, differences and commonalities, erasure, and so on. Semi-structured Interviews To understand the goals and perspectives of various educators, we are interviewing curriculum writers, school administrators, and teachers (interviews are currently in progress). We aim to interview 30 individuals in each city (60 total): five curriculum writers; five administrators; and 20 teachers. In these interviews, we are exploring educators’ goals, successes, and challenges related to implementing LGBT-inclusive curriculum. We also hope to learn what kinds of community responses they are receiving, and how they are navigating disagreements that arise. We will also use Dedoose to analyze our interviews. To create deductive codes, we rely on existing literature about how teachers navigate controversial curriculum (Binder 2002; Petrzela 2015; Zimmerman 2022). We will then inductively add codes as our data reveals additional themes (LeCompte and Schensul 2012).

Our research is in progress, and our findings are preliminary. In our analysis of lesson plans, we find interesting trends in the topics. Both countries contain numerous lesson plans on individual role models, possibly reflecting American and British individualistic values and beliefs in meritocracy. British lesson plans focus somewhat more on social movements and transnational LGBT issues, while American lesson plans are focused more locally. Both countries seem to espouse narratives of progress—suggesting that serious discrimination against the LGBT community is a thing of the past, and societies are moving towards tolerance. As we conduct interviews, we are hearing how curriculum writers seek to balance narratives of LGBT history—acknowledging past persecutions and injustices while also presenting narratives of resistance and empowerment. They grapple with potentially contradictory goals of telling a more accurate history, while simultaneously helping LGBT students to “see themselves” represented in curriculum in ways that improve self-image. We also hear how teachers, intimidated by backlash against LGBT issues, often censor themselves and stick to a more traditional history curriculum. Teachers grapple with how to respect the beliefs of their local communities, even when local communities want to eliminate the teaching of LGBT history. This research is significant for three reasons. First, investigating LGBT curriculum mandates can help us better understand the benefits and drawbacks of curricular mandates as tools for making schools more inclusive (Camicia 2016). Secondly, this research will help us understand education policy implementation more broadly, by illuminating how policies and curricula shift—sometimes in response to backlash—in different communities (Honig 2006; Moland 2020). Finally, this study will bring important insights into the complexities of multiculturalism and globalization. Because both pro-LGBT advocates and conservative minorities draw on pluralist rights-based frameworks (Binder 2002; Collins 2006), this case illustrates the contradictions inherent in pluralist ideologies.

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