While ample evidence positions positive primary/secondary school climates and inclusive curriculum as protective factors for gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) youth (Waling, Bellamy, Ezer, Lucke, & Fisher, 2020), educators are often reluctant to engage with related topics due to pervasive concerns about parental and community backlash (Cumming-Potvin & Martino, 2018). Educators express particular concerns when considering how acknowledgement of diverse genders might be incorporated into their classrooms. This paper will commence with a discussion about the recent political and educational climate in Australia with respect to gender and sexuality diversity (Thompson 2020). This backdrop provides a context for the authors’ research, a large-scale, nationally-representative research project which investigated Australian public school parents’ attitudes towards GSD-inclusivity across Kindergarten through Year 12 education – the final year of education. Their findings demonstrated that over 80% of parents support a GSD-inclusive curriculum, including acknowledgement of gender diversity (Ullman, Ferfolja & Hobby, 2022). This session will focus on the development of a suite of professional learning resources for K-12 educators as a central outcome of this national project, inclusive of an asynchronous micro credential; a professional learning module designed for educator professional development - which includes multiple guidance resources; and a short film. The authors will provide a partial screening of this film resource titled, “What Parents Want: Talking about Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools”, developed verbatim from both in-depth interviews and an online forum with parents of GSD students (see Ferfolja & Ullman, 2023). In this film, parents share their experiences of navigating the school system for/with their GSD child and suggest how educators can best support GSD young people.  Parents’ narratives featured in the film were inclusive of three children assigned male at birth who had transitioned/were transitioning while at school; one child assigned female at birth who identified as gender-fluid and who shared this with their teachers/peers; an adolescent boy who identified as bisexual; and a same-sex attracted adolescent girl. Accordingly, a particular feature of this film are the experiences of students and their families navigating the constrictions of a normative, binary framing of gender at their schools and how expanded understandings and provisions can support gender diverse children and young people. The session will conclude by presenting educators’ responses to these professional learning resources and preliminary data on their impact within the school setting.

Cumming-Potvin, W. & W. Martino (2018). The policyscape of transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system: A case study. Gender and Education, 30(6), 715–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018.1483491. Ferfolja, T. & Ullman, J. (2023). Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/gsds/educator_resources accessed 25th January 2024. Thompson, J. D. (2020). Your parents will read this: Reading (as) parents in journalistic coverage of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia Controversy. Journalism, 21(12), 1–14. Ullman, J., Ferfolja, T., & Hobby, L. (2022). Parents’ perspectives on the inclusion of gender and sexuality diversity in K-12 schooling: Results from an Australian national study. Sex Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2021.1949975. Waling, A., Bellamy, R., Ezer, P., Kerr, L., Lucke, J. & Fisher, C. (2020). ‘It’s kinda bad, honestly’: Australian students’ experiences of relationships and sexuality education. Health Education Research, 35(6), 538–552. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyaa032.