Conference Agenda

Research shows many educational leaders do not consistently take responsibility for creating structural change toward the inclusion of gender- expansive and sexually diverse populations (Payne & Smith, 2018). Rather, many leaders see such policy work as the domain of higher levels of government or gender-expansive and sexually diverse populations themselves (McQuillan et al., forthcoming). Yet, many leaders have expressed care for gender-expansive and sexually diverse youth and seek information about supporting such students and staff. This symposium takes the stance that creating structural change toward equity and belonging for LGBTQ+ populations is a shared responsibility across levels of administration, roles, and identities. Accordingly, the session proposes all leaders must develop knowledge to embed practices that position LGBTQ+ students and staff to thrive in schools. These papers draw on work with LGBTQ+ populations across levels and roles — students, community organizations, school & district administrators, and school of education deans — to provide pathways for leaders and scholars to leverage experiential knowledge of LGBTQ+ people, develop expertise, and take responsibility around gender- and sexual- diversity in schools. Authors discuss professional development entry points.

20-minute presentations of each paper (60 minutes)

Panel discussion including audience participation (30 minutes)

As nations have banned the discrimination of LGBTQ+ people, international anti-LGBTQ advocates have pushed back against LGBTQ+ rights victories with efforts to criminalize and erase gender- and sexual diversity in schools. In the midst of this politicization of supportive policies, programs, and practices, many educational leaders in elementary and secondary schools have expressed interest in and the need to learn more about supporting gender- and sexually diverse youth in schools (McQuillan & Leininger, 2021). Few have examined how resources shape leaders’ perceptions of the laws concerning LGBTQ+ students, and more specifically transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) students. I apply sensemaking theory to examine administrators’ understanding of gender-diversity, existing discrimination policy protections, and inclusivity programming. I provide a roadmap in response to leaders’ question, “What can and should we do to support LGBTQ students?”

It draws from 1) educators’ LGBTQ+-inclusivity program evaluation survey data from 80 schools 2) semi-structured interviews with 30 elementary and secondary school leaders across different policy contexts, and 3 ) interviews with 6 LGBTQ+ community organization leaders who support LGBTQ+-inclusivity professional development programs. The program evaluation takes a mixed-methods approach to assess educators’ beliefs about the need and relevance of the training, capacity to improve learning environments, and suggestions for improvement. I present summary statistics for close-ended items and themes that arose. In the interview study, I use inductive and deductive coding (Charmaz, 2006) to assess how leaders approached (a) administrative processes concerning LGBTQ+ students and (b) learning about gender more broadly.

Findings from the program evaluation indicate that educators want more inclusive professional development that provides opportunities for self-reflection, is sustained. Even after abbreviated LGBTQ-inclusivity sessions, educators felt more capable of navigating conversations about gender and sexuality with students, peer educators, and parents than before the training. Findings from interviews revealed additional strategies whereby local leaders build their capacity for structural gender reforms by partnering with LGBTQ community organizations and students. To prepare for meaningful conversations about structural reforms, leaders engage proactively with a variety of professional development tools from community organizations to learn about gender and sexual diversity. Some leaders with the most nuanced understanding of the breadth of structural and individual reforms students understood students as an important source of knowledge. These brought in external community groups and sought information from students while embedding long-lasting organizational, procedural reforms.

This study calls attention to the need for strategies to support and inform PK-12 district leaders about the legal landscape, their professional responsibilities to LGBTQ+ students, and multiple layers of support needed to ensure leaders can support all learners. By focusing on the experiential knowledge from LGBTQ+ community organizations and LGBTQ+ students, leaders leverage accessible community resources to build their expertise around supporting LGBTQ+ populations. For example, LGBTQ+ community leaders provide effective, ongoing professional development opportunities, which can be bundled with other efforts, including surveys. Drawing on students' understanding of their identities and treating students as agentic policy actors facilitates a learning experience for leaders, who might not have as much experience as students in conversations about diversity.

This study explores LGBTQ+ educational administrators’ sensemaking and decision-making regarding the technical work of instruction (Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Spillane et al., 2011). Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ elementary and secondary school and district leaders across the United States and Puerto Rico, I examine how administrators interpret, implement, and initiate policies related to instructional leadership. I draw on Spillane’s (2015) formulation of “instruction” to consider the impact of leaders’ policies and practices on students’ experiences that “extend beyond the classroom to students’ experience[s] in schools more broadly in the hallways, lunchrooms, and before and after school start and end times” (p. 279). Informed by this definition of instruction, as well as theories of culturally responsive leadership (Kalifa et al., 2016) and the turn toward affect in education (Dernikos et al., 2020; McQuillan, 2021), I combine deductive and inductive coding to analyze interview transcripts and pay special attention to policy work toward the inclusion of gender-expansive and sexually diverse youth in instructional practices (Miles et al., 2013).

While much of the literature on administrative sensemaking focuses on the significance of professional roles and instructional leadership logics (e.g., Rigby, 2013), I find that school and district leaders’ experiences with personal identity — specifically childhood, gender, sexuality, race, and religion — have played decisive roles in administrators’ instructional leadership policies and practices. Experiences and emotions related to such identities emerged as critical factors in administrators’ narratives about their interpersonal and institutional change work toward improving students’ experiences and those of teachers and families. In particular, I find that leaders’ practices that seek structural reform toward equity and inclusion of gender-expansive and sexually diverse youth are (a) frequently driven by administrative feelings of care, pride, and empathy and (b) require creative, sustained, and translational communication with teachers and families. Based on these findings, I argue that conceptualizing sensemaking about instructional leadership as an affective, identity-based process broadens “instruction,” with implications for families’ and teachers’ personal and professional learning and development.

By exploring the influence of leaders’ personal identities, experiences, and emotions in sensemaking related to instructional policy, this study not only emphasizes the benefit of integrating opportunities for critical self-awareness into professional learning toward educational leadership practices grounded in care, equity, and inclusion; it also highlights the value of leaders’ transparency about their identities and experiences in the communication of their policy decisions. By focusing on LGBTQ+ leaders’ work toward structural change, this study builds on literature about emotion and affect in sociological literature on organizational change by exploring the impact of previously unexplored emotions: pride and care (Creed et al., 2014; Bonilla-Silva, 2019). In doing so, the study helps to explain previous findings about LGBTQ+ administrators’ attention to topics of equity and diversity (Evans, 2020; McQuillan et al., 2023; Prosen, 2013) and highlights possibilities for administrative support and allyship across identities and roles.

This paper offers two case studies of school of education deans who identify as LGBTQ+ to highlight their experiential knowledge in building capacity among educational leadership and teacher preparation students. This experiential knowledge derives from the combination of professional roles and personal identities. In the spirit of understanding the development of expertise in gender- and sexual-diversity in schools as a process of sharing experiential knowledge, this paper serves as a medium through which current LGBTQ+ administrators’ experiential knowledge can motivate and enhance the change work of educational administrators and higher education scholars.

Theoretical and empirical understandings of queerness frame these cases. de Lauretis (1991), through the first academic use of “queer theory," called for new discursive protocols and horizons to exceed our constructed silences. The authors share experiences to affirm the interdependence of theory and practice in queerer worldbuilding; new language begets new action, which can beget more liberating experiences. The development of policies and reforms around gender and sexuality requires constructive, courageous, consistent dialogue across and within generations. Such dialogue includes sharing experiences with history and identity, so that convergences and divergences in experiences can be named, examined anew, and better understood for their affective and structural dimensions. The case study of one dean includes a reflection on his coming-of-age in Philadelphia as an Irish-Catholic gay man at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. His lived experience has shaped the values and skills for service as a healing educator and leader. Simultaneously, he carries forward wounds that can present challenges for leadership practice and require reflection in stressful circumstances.

Additionally, the authors draw from Robinson & Espelage studies in ER (2011), who find queer youth are at disproportionate risk at school and mental health in comparison to straight peers but also show how queer youth are resilient and strong. In other words, mental health disparities are a function of harmful environments, rather than linked to identity or being. For example, the case study of the second dean highlights his experience as a gay youth in the early 1980s. The isolation and loneliness he felt would lead him to perceive his entire school as hating him; in turn, thoughts of suicide would take hold in his mind. This inner turmoil compelled him to hide hugely important aspects of his own existence from others during these formative years. This was created and compounded in part by the lack of structural support he experienced in the education system. At one high school, he experienced repeated homophobic harassment from certain individuals in school, which was so overwhelming that he considered quitting school altogether. The school district overseeing the high school had no anti-bullying policies. When he reported the harassment to a school counselor, it was met not only with confusion about what to do; the counselor also expressed the mentality that “boys will be boys” and that the brunt of the responsibility fell on him to “suck it up” and “roll with the punches” of high school.