Session Information
33 SES 05.5 A, General Poster Session
General Poster Session
Contribution
Because every European citizen should feel safe and be able to be themselves, recent legislative developments, case law and policy initiatives have been evoked to improve people’s lives and to build equal and welcoming societies, including for LGBTQIA+ people. Nevertheless, this has not always been translated into clear improvements in their lives. Discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people persists throughout the EU and they are still unable to be themselves without the risk of social exclusion and the feeling to be threatened. The European Union Fundamental Rights Agency’s (FRA) LGBT survey identified transgender persons as particularly vulnerable to hate crimes and unlikely to report them (EU-LGBTI II, 2020). Despite that, anti-trans violence has become the focus of attention in European and international policy discussions and research in recent years (e.g. the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025), there is still a need for more research focusing on the strengths and opportunities from the transgender persons' perspective. As many are still vulnerable to being bullied at school, experience gender-related violence in society and at home and are not being accepted by significant others. Parents of transgender persons report high levels of bullying, lack of attention for transgender persons in the anti-bullying policy at school, lack of understanding and exclusion from staff and inconvenient rules regarding bathroom use, school uniforms and sports participation (Johnson et al., 2014). This also has an impact on student learning. Therefore, efforts should be made to make secondary schools more transgender inclusive and supportive (Beemyn, 2012).
In this project, we aimed 1) to increase resilience of transgender youth within the school context and 2) to guide educational professionals on how they can combat and prevent violence and bullying against transgender youth. Both by developing a gender manifesto. We want to raise awareness and improve skills of educational professionals to counter stereotyping, stigmatization, pathologizing, discrimination, harassment and bullying affecting trans people. The research question of this project is: How can we enhance the resilience of transgender youth and develop a trans-sensitive environment in secondary schools through the use of a gender manifesto?
As such, we hope to facilitate community building at school. Community building consists of creating an inclusive school culture in which every individual feels at comfort. For this, a shared vision between teacher, (transgender) student and parents is essential and was captured in the manifesto. Research shows that there is a need for this type of approaches to make school-wide changes, rather than just focusing on the safety of the transgender community (Sergiovanni, 2022).
What makes this project innovative, is that it aims to strengthen the resilience of transgender youth (16-25 years old) in a bottom up manner, using a co-creative research approach, instead of victimizing transgender people (van Dijk-de Vries et al., 2020). Inspired by the Lundy Model of child participation, transgender youth received a voice, platform and safe space to influence society (Kennan et al., 2019). This can help to reduce the impact of victimization on the mental health of trans youth, helping them to speak openly about violence, feel more confident in coping with violence, to find social support and to report experiences of violence.
In this European CERV project educational professionals (n=6), transgender youth (n=5) and cis gender peers (n=4) were involved to create the manifesto. This gender manifesto describes how school teachers can broaden their view on gender education and how schools can make (minor) adjustments to meet the needs of transgender individuals.
Method
In this project we worked together with psychologists of the UZ Ghent Centre for Sexology and Gender. We first conducted a literature review about community building in education and resilience, specifically focussing on LGBTQIA+. During a co-creation session, transgender youth (16-25y) (n=10) brainstormed about the content, set up and conditions of the module. Based on these findings and the literature study , the content of the module was developed and a manual was created. Participants for the module were recruited by UZ Ghent as all selected participants were undergoing treatment at the UZ Ghent or were on the waiting list. The module took place in the UZ Ghent, in order to ensure a safe and familiar environment for the participants. All researchers, involved in the module, received a training about trans-sensitive approaches before the module started. If necessary, psychologists were available for the participants. The module consisted of five sessions of half a day. During the first session, transgender youth brainstormed about the concept “’gender manifesto”. On the second session, the participants brought a cis peer to discuss the concept again. They reflected on the main topics that should be in a gender manifesto and started the writing process. At the end of this session the participants were encouraged to contact an educational professional and the researchers also contacted some educational professionals. In the third session, the transgender youth presented the main topics of the gender manifesto to the educational professionals. Together they discussed the format of the output. During the fourth workshop transgender youth finalized the manifesto. At the final session, transgender youth presented their poster (the gender manifesto) to a broader public of educational professionals and a panel discussion took place. Before the start and at the end of the module, pre- and post-tests were administered to the participants. These pre- and post-tests were used to measure self-esteem and their overall quality of life and were set up based on existing questionnaires such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and the WHOQoL-BREF. Besides the pre-and post-tests, a focus group, supervised by the psychologists and co-design specialized researchers, was held to gather qualitative data as well. This way, we collected both qualitative and quantitative data from the participants that gave us insight into how they experience the module and how following the module influences their resilience.
Expected Outcomes
We can conclude that the creation of the gender manifesto increased the resilience of the trans youth as well. Different participants spoke about an increase in the dare to speak out. The educational professionals involved in this study moreover mentioned that they learned new knowledge about transgender youth and that they recognize the need for being more sensitive towards transgender youth at school. They also indicate that sometimes little things can provide big changes (e.g. let transgender youth express their pronoun, provide gender neutral mails,…). From various items in the surveys, we can deduce that transgender young people also see a role for teachers to strengthen their resilience at school. As such, the main message is that it is important to enhance and reinforce the role of educational professionals in making transgender youth more resilience by taking action in the educational practice. The poster of the gender manifesto is now used as didactic tool by transgender health professionals in trainings. This gender manifesto is also integrated as didactic material in different courses of the VIVES university of applied sciences. As such, we hope to increase the trans-sensitivity of (future) professionals in order to increase the resilience of transgender youth. Developing this manifesto helped to strengthen the resilience of the participants and contributed to the community building objective, but also helped to raise awareness and brought this topic to the attention of schools. The gender manifesto can be found on our project website and has been shared with our national and European stakeholders to ensure a widespread implementation.
References
Beemyn, G. (2012). The experiences and needs of transgender community college students. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 36(7), 504-510. FRA, EU-LGBTI II - A long way to go for LGBTI equality (14 May 2020) (FRA, second LGBTI survey) Johnson D., Silkorski, J;, Savage, TA & Woitaswksi, SA (2014). ouders van jongeren die zich identificeren als transgender: een verkennend onderzoek. Forum voor schoolpsychologie, 8(1), 56–74. Kennan, D., Brady, B., & Forkan, C. (2019). Space, voice, audience and influence: the Lundy model of participation (2007) in child welfare practice. Practice, 31(3), 205-218. van Dijk-de Vries, A., Stevens, A., van der Weijden, T., & Beurskens, A. J. (2020). How to support a co-creative research approach in order to foster impact. The development of a Co-creation Impact Compass for healthcare researchers. PLoS One, 15(10), e0240543. Sergiovanni, T. J. (2022). Building community in schools. San Francisco: JosseyBass
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