Conference Agenda

The approval of Spanish Law 04/2023 of 28 February, aimed at ensuring the effective equality of trans people and guaranteeing the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons, represents a significant milestone in the legal recognition of gender self-determination and the depathologisation of trans identities. This law builds upon a consolidated framework of anti-discrimination policies and services, while simultaneously introducing new regulatory, administrative and institutional challenges. This study examines the real-life impact of Law 04/2023 on the lives of trans and non-binary people in Catalonia, with particular attention to its implications for education, from an intersectional perspective. Accordingly, the guiding research question is: how does the implementation of Law 04/2023 reshape educational practices, professional training, and institutional responses affecting trans and non-binary people in Catalonia, and what barriers and facilitators condition its educational impact?

The theoretical framework is grounded in a critical and interdisciplinary educational perspective that brings together critical legal theory, intersectionality, transfeminism, and theories of child and youth participation. From a critical legal standpoint, the law is understood not merely as a normative framework but as a pedagogical device that structures institutional cultures, professional knowledge, and everyday interactions within schools, universities, and public services. Drawing on Spade (2015), the study conceptualises law as a mechanism that can either reproduce or challenge structural inequalities depending on how it is enacted in educational and welfare institutions. Recognition, therefore, becomes an educational process that shapes which gendered subjectivities are rendered legitimate within learning environments, echoing Butler’s (2004) notion of recognisability as a condition for social intelligibility.

An intersectional framework further informs the analysis, enabling an examination of how educational inequalities experienced by trans and non-binary people are intensified through the interaction of gender identity with other axes such as age, migration status, social class, disability, and territorial location (Crenshaw, 1990). As highlighted by Platero Méndez (2014), educational institutions often function as key sites where normative gender expectations are enforced, producing differentiated experiences of inclusion and exclusion. On the other hand, transfeminist theory provides a critical lens through which to interrogate binary and cisnormative assumptions embedded in educational curricula, professional training, and institutional protocols. Following Stryker (2025) and Platero (2023), the research understands education as a central arena for either reproducing gender normativity or fostering transformative practices that recognise gender diversity as a social and pedagogical resource. From this perspective, Law 04/2023 is not only a legal instrument but also a potential catalyst for pedagogical change, demanding new forms of teacher education, professional development and educational policies

The framework also incorporates the perspective of child and youth protagonism, drawing on Liebel (1994) and more recent work on participatory approaches with trans children and adolescents (Langarita et al., 2025). This approach challenges adult-centred models recognising trans children and young people as active agents in the construction of their identities and educational trajectories. Pedagogies informed by queer and critical education theories (Mayo & Rodríguez, 2019) are central here, as they seek to destabilise normative gender binaries and promote inclusive learning environments grounded in participation, dialogue, and recognition.

Finally, the study situates the Catalan case within a broader European and international educational policy context. European strategies on LGBTIQ+ equality and inclusive education emphasise the role of schools, universities, and lifelong learning systems in combating discrimination and fostering social cohesion. However, comparative research shows that progressive legal frameworks often coexist with persistent gaps in teacher training, curriculum development, and institutional accountability (Symeonidis, Hellmann, & Laux, 2024). By analysing the implementation of Law 04/2023 through an educational lens, this paper contributes to international debates on how education systems mediate the relationship between legal reform and social change.

Given the marked rise in transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) children and adolescents, schools need to be equipped to support students’ gender transition. Our research explores how mothers of TGD children in Israel experience school responses to their children’s gender expression or gender transition in three educational settings – secular, state-religious, and alternative schools. We identify temporality as a key dimension of coming-out as TGD in school. Based on studies on the temporality of gender transition (Kennedy, 2022) , and sociological studies on rhythms of healthcare systems and the individuals who access them (Goodman and Tal, 2025; Zarchin and Asher 2025), we point to the lack of synchrony between school response and mothers’ perspectives on the temporality of their children’s gender transition, and discuss mothers’ attempts to align the rhythm of the school’s response with that of their child’s transition.

Studies across national contexts have investigated parent-school relations in the context of TGD children, showing parents proactively sharing information on TGD identities with school staff (Aramburu Alegría 2018). However, school personnel are inadequately prepared to address TGD children's needs (Mangin 2019). Payne and Smith (2022) illustrated how “discomfort serves as a socially acceptable narrative for school personnel to prioritize the feelings of cisgender adults and children over the needs of transgender students” (2022:45). While schools differ in their responses to children's social transition (Schimmel-Bristow et al. 2018), “cisnormativity permeates all aspects of school life,” privileging cisgender young people and fostering restrictive ideas about gender expression (McBride and Neary, 1091).

Parents of TGD children may play an important role in mediating the gender diversity of their children in interactions with school staff, especially in the absence of formal regulations. Based on interviews with mothers of TGD children and a number of other actors in the field, our study extends previous studies of the temporality of gender transition into the school arena. Several theoretical models have explicated the process of transgender identity development, breaking it down into a sequence of consecutive stages (Bockting and Coleman 2016; Devor 2004; Lev 2004). The temporal dimension of responses to assertions of transgender identity is related to core beliefs about gender and temporality: immutability is seen as a key trait of gender, and the medical model of gender transition incorporated mandatory periods of waiting (Butler 2004, Spade 2006).

We show that in the Israeli case schools’ responses to children coming out as TGD range from immediate acceptance and affirmation to deferral and denial, with notable differences between secular and religious schools. In state-religious schools, gender transition is impossible causing children to leave for other schools. The very notions of transness or gender diversity are not part of the social world of these schools. In state and alternative schools, responses varied between immediate accommodation and deferral. Deferral was variously motivated. At times it stemmed from conflicting constraints and priorities of the school; in other cases it reflected a felt need for time to develop an adequate educational response in the absence of appropriate resources; in yet others it seemed to suggest a notion that trans identity should be put to the test of time.

We found that the imposed delays often conflicted with the parents’ sense of urgency. A child’s coming out in school is the culmination of a long intra-subjective process followed by a family process. When parents advocate social transition in school they have already overcome their doubts and equate the child’s well-being with their ability to express their authentic gender. The result is a lack of synchrony between parents’ understanding of the temporality of their child’s gender transition and the pace of the school’s response.

This presentation draws on findings from the Gender Matters research project, which investigates how gender is understood, experienced, and represented in Australian secondary schools. In contrast to earlier policy eras where gender equity had been a focus for national educational policy, current policy is fragmented, devolved and reactive, ranging from overt resistance on some issues to disinterest and neglect in others. It intersects with international research and global trends: rising conservative backlash to gender equity, increasing homophobia and transphobia, and the mobilisation of state policy to repress social progress and focus interventions on schools. Our research identified compelling countermovements within schools where young people and their teachers insisted on expansive notions of gender justice and described reconfigurations of gender that move beyond conventional gender binaries.

Our study took place in two jurisdictions with markedly different policy contexts. In NSW, an agenda hostile to gender diversity dominated the political arena through the research period, impacting school practices and policies, including their willingness to participate in research; and in the progressive jurisdiction of the ACT, gender inclusion was prioritised in policy and practice and research was welcomed.

Through focus groups, interviews, and arts-based responses, the research revealed significant divides on gender justice, with young people demonstrating robust and wide-ranging commitments to gender justice. The spectrum of responses from teachers spanned those expressing ambivalence about contemporary gender perspectives through to teachers and school leaders working in partnership with students to create inclusive spaces and address systemic gender inequities.

The analysis is informed by feminist poststructuralist, queer, and new materialist perspectives. From feminist poststructuralism, our research explores how gender is produced through discourse, institutional practices, and regimes of truth. Queer theory interrogates how cisnormative and heterosexist assumptions are maintained through everyday school norms, as well as how young people exceed, resist, or rework those norms. New materialist perspectives allow attention to the material and affective dimensions of schooling—how bodies, spaces, objects, and atmospheres shape what becomes possible (or precarious) in the enactment of inclusion. Across these frameworks, gender justice is approached as a practical and ethical horizon concerned with the conditions under which young people can live, learn, and belong, and where teachers support them.

Our findings indicate an urgent need for sustained and coherent commitments to gender justice in schools.

While the research is situated in Australia, it resonates globally as neofascist gender normativities threaten to reach across borders and extend into our institutions.

Our research argues that education systems must address gender equity, resist cultural backlash, and foster inclusive, democratic school environments where all young people can thrive and be themselves.

The research was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Scheme.