Session Information
04 SES 08 A, Bullying
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper reports on a UK-based project which explores some of the ways in which issues around sexuality, and in particular homosexuality/ non-normative sexuality, are handled in UK secondary schools, particularly through the teaching of the English curriculum. The UK gay activist group, Stonewall, have reported serious levels of homophobia in schools (2007; 2009) and, with the vast majority of schools having no policy around sexuality or homophobia, this presents significant difficulties for pupils, staff and others involved in education. Although Stonewall reports that in schools with anti-homophobic bullying policies, young gay people are 60% more likely not to have been bullied (The School Report), its report on the whole paints a bleak picture. We aim to explore both the negative aspects of experience in schools, as well as the more positive ways in which issues around sexuality and homophobia are dealt with in a small number of UK schools in the West Midlands area. We focus specifically upon how sexuality discourses may be enacted through the English national curriculum (the integration of sexual orientation into the curriculum is also a recommendation put forward by Stonewall in The School Report). Sexuality has, arguably, received less attention than other aspects of inclusive education, particularly ethnicity, disability, gender and social class in the UK. Yet homophobic bullying is the second most common form of bullying in UK schools (after bullying around body size and weight). Therefore, more research on sexuality in relation to various aspects of schooling is urgently-needed in order to improve the well-being of students and to continue to make education in the UK and elsewhere more inclusive. It is hoped that increasing the visibility of sexuality within international research in inclusive education will contribute to challenging the culture of silence that exists around sexuality in our secondary schools.
The main questions addressed in this paper are:
· What kinds of discourses around sexuality exist in UK secondary school environments?
· How are such discourses enacted and circulated in UK secondary school environments?
· What role does the secondary English curriculum play in the circulation, reinforcement and/or challenge to such discourses?
· How can what we learn about sexuality discourses in UK school contexts be useful or applicable to a wider European context?
The research presented in this paper takes a critical discourse approach to analysing discourses of sexuality as they emerge through the English curriculum documents themselves, and through interview data obtained from a sample of English teachers and LGBT-identified young people based in the West Midlands area of the UK. It is hoped that this research will contribute to developing understandings of sexuality issues in school environments not just in the UK but internationally. Through presenting our research at the ECER conference we hope to engage in dialogue with participants from across Europe to begin exploring how sexuality discourses are enacted in the UK English curriculum in comparison with other European countries and across comparable school curricula.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Catalano, R., Junger-Tas, J., Morita, Y., Olweus, D., Slee, P. and Smith P. K.. (1998) The Nature of School Bullying: A Cross-National Perspective. London: Routledge. DePalma and Atkinson, A. (2008) Invisible Boundaries: Addressing Sexualities Equality in Children’s Worlds. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2001) Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) 121-38. Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997) Critical discourse analysis. In T. van Dijk (ed) Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. 258-284. Jimerson, S., Swearer, S. And Espelage, L. (eds) (2009) Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective. London: Routledge. Stonewall (2007) The School Report: The experiences of young gay people in Britain's schools. Stonewall (2009) The Teachers’ Report on Homophobic Bullying in Britain's Schools . Wilkinson, L. and Jennifer P. (2009) School Culture and the Well-Being of Same-Sex Attracted Youth. Gender and Society, vol 23 no.4. 542-68. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds) (2001) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
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