The Impact of School Climate on LGBTQ Youth

In this Educational Researcher article, Joseph Robinson and Dorothy Espelage (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) report on a study of 11,337 Wisconsin students in grades 7-12. Robinson and Espelage say that because students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning are (a) more often subjected to bullying, and (b) more likely to skip school, think about suicide, and attempt suicide, it’s often assumed that bullying is the main cause. This has led many schools to focus on reducing bullying in hopes that this will solve the problem.

However, this study found that LGBTQ students were more likely to skip school, think about suicide, and attempt suicide than demographically matched heterosexual-identifying students who experienced similar levels of bullying. 

The researchers conclude that policies aimed at reducing bullying are not enough to eliminate truancy, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among LGBTQ students. Schools also need to address the stigmatizing of LGBTQ youth and work to create supportive learning climates for sexual minorities by training teachers and staff in sexual diversity, discussing homophobia in sports and physical education, incorporating instruction on the contributions of LGBTQ historical figures, recognizing and modifying subtle forms of everyday hetero-normativity, and supporting Gay-Straight Alliances.

Interestingly, the study found that two subgroups were at significantly greater risk than the LGBTQ population as a whole: those who identified as bisexual and questioning. Robinson and Espelage believe there are two reasons. First, some of the bisexual and questioning youth might have been in transition to full lesbian or gay identification, and therefore not “embedded in more supportive environments that allow them to claim these exclusively homosexual identities at relatively young ages,” say the authors. Second, these students may have been victims of “biphobia” – prejudice against bisexuals from heterosexual and lesbian/gay youth and adults, producing a double whammy of discrimination. “This, in turn, may contribute to heightened feelings of isolation, depression, and generally riskier outcomes,” say Robinson and Espelage.

What about the role of factors outside the school? There’s no question that LGBTQ students’ perceptions of parents’ love and support, physical abuse by parents, being kicked out of the home, childhood sexual abuse, and dating violence play a role. But Robinson and Espelage took these factors into account and still found a significant influence from school-climate factors – what they call “stigmatizing, macro-level messages that youth receive about sexual minorities (e.g., they are unwanted, they are different) that persist even in the absence of direct individual-level peer victimization.”

“Bullying Explains Only Part of LGBTQ-Heterosexual Risk Disparities: Implications for Policy and Practice” by Joseph Robinson and Dorothy Espelage in Educational Researcher, November 2012 (Vol. 41, #8, p. 309-319), 

http://edr.sagepub.com/content/41/8/309.full.pdf+html 

From the Marshall Memo #460