Suchergebnisse

Prejudice and hate crimes against lesbians and gay men are prevalent throughout the United States. Prejudice in public school settings is particularly problematic for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) students and LGB parents. Efforts to reduce prejudice for LGB groups have met with limited success. Creating safer and more inclusive school environments is essential. An experimental mixed methods field design tested outcomes of an intergroup dialogue intervention on public school teacher attitudes, feelings, and behaviors toward LGB students and parents. Quantitative results indicate dialogue participation resulted in statistically significant positive changes in attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. Qualitative data analysis confirmed positive changes as a result of dialogue participation.

Tensions emanating from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict lead to misunderstanding, segregation, and conflict between Arab and Jewish students on U.S. college campuses. Teaching about this conflict presents particular challenges for faculty and student affairs staff. This study uses a participatory action research method that engages Arab and Jewish students in understanding and changing issues of concern to their own campus communities. A qualitative analysis of the final papers and interviews from the students in Arab/Jewish intergroup dialogue courses indicated that the students had different pre-perceptions of each other, experienced conflict and strong emotions in the dialogue, and reported outcomes that progressed from the development of communication and listening skills to critical self-reflection, perspective-taking and empathy, development of friendships, and action for social change. The students continued to struggle with understanding each other and maintaining relationships. Recommendations for pedagogy and research are discussed in this article.

Objective: This study evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention using theater and dialogue to raise awareness about homophobia and transphobia and increase intentions to participate in macro-level change efforts around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) issues. Methods: Using a pretest–posttest design, this study examines changes in advocacy intentions around LGBTQQ issues among middle school and high school students who participated in the intervention ( n = 515). Results: Students reported a significant increase in intentions to advocate. Existing intervention behaviors and increased recognition of homophobia/transphobia as problems were associated with greater increases in intention to advocate. Respondents with higher existing intervention behaviors, as well as White students and cisgender women, reported higher advocacy intentions compared to students of color and cisgender men. Further, we found indication of greater awareness of homophobia/transphobia as a problem in school. Conclusions: Youth-led theater and dialogue-based interventions may be a promising strategy for addressing heterosexism and genderism in schools.