In this study, we focused on teachers' knowledge and awareness of LGBT+ issues in a Catholic secondary school in Ireland. We explored the barriers teachers encounter that prevent them from being openly supportive of LGBT+ students. For this study, 40 teachers completed an online questionnaire, which was followed by a smaller focus group interview…

As legal structures for same-sex relationships are introduced in many contexts, the politics of sexuality are negotiated along religious/secular lines. Religious and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBT-Q) rights are pitted against one another such that LGBT-Q lives often assumed to be secular. Schools are crucibles of intermingling…

Schools are quasi-public/private organisations and being a teacher involves negotiating personal and professional boundaries. These boundaries have posed particular challenges for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBT-Q) teachers whose everyday lives are complicated by legislative, religious and cultural constraints, moral panics…

The research reported in this paper sought to determine the level of awareness among school principals in primary schools in Ireland where homophobic bullying is concerned. International research has previously shown that school leaders as animators of school climate are often lacking in their responses to this type of bullying [Walton, G. 2004.…

There is a dearth of research on the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth in schools in the Republic of Ireland. The current study assessed the school-based experiences of twenty five (N = 25) participants in the BeLonG To LGBT youth group in Dublin city using a mixed design survey instrument. The majority (n = 19) of…

This paper draws together [Hochschild's (1979) "Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure." "American Journal of Sociology" 85: 551-575; (1983) "The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling." London: University of California Press] concepts of "emotional labour" and "feeling rules"…

While developments have been made concerning the understanding of general bullying behaviour in Irish schools, considerably less is known about homophobic bullying. Presented here are the findings of a study into the views and perspectives of a self-selected sample of 123 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT) secondary school-aged young…

Sexual minority youth are at greater risk for bullying victimization than their heterosexual peers but data on perpetration and cybervictimization is limited. Using representative data from seven European countries and one region (N = 14,545), this study compared traditional bullying victimization and perpetration, and cyberbullying victimization…

Education programs can help families of trans young people to accept and support a trans family member. However, little has been written about the design and development of such programs. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature by detailing the design and development of an education program for families of trans young people. A…