Abstract
Students' perceptions of their school climates are associated with psychosocial and academic adjustment. The present study examined the role of school strategies to promote safety in predicting students' perceptions of safety for gender nonconforming peers among 1415 students in 28 high schools. Using multilevel modeling techniques, we examined student- and school-level effects on students' perceptions of safety for gender nonconforming peers. We found that older students, bisexual youth, Latino youth, and youth who experienced school violence perceived their gender nonconforming male peers to be less safe. Similarly, we found that older students and students who experienced school violence and harassment due to gender nonconformity perceived their gender nonconforming female peers to be less safe. At the school-level, we found that when schools included lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues in the curriculum and had a Gay-Straight Alliance, students perceived their schools as safer for gender nonconforming male peers.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 187-196 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of Adolescence |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by a contract from the California Endowment to the California Safe Schools Coalition and a William T Grant Foundation Scholar Award to the first author, and the Fitch Nesbitt Endowment, Frances McClelland Institute at the University of Arizona. The authors thank the Gay-Straight Alliance Network for their role in collecting the data, the California Safe Schools Coalition Evaluation Committee for access to the data and for their thoughtful input, and Cesar Egurrola, Nicole Lehman, Jacqueline Larriva, and Craig Talmage for assistance with data management.
Keywords
- Gender nonconformity
- Heteronormativity
- LGBT
- School safety
- School victimization
