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Louise Walker

Abstract

This article aims to discuss some of the issues surrounding homophobia in schools and how to tackle these issues. It starts off by discussing some of the problems children are facing with homophobia and homophobic bullying in schools. Children are not being taught about this topic in schools as they are with racism or other similar issues. As they are uneducated they do not understand and respect the differences between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people and themselves. From research it is clear that some of the reasons this is not being tackled in school include the lack of policies and the confidence of teachers to tackle it. The article then continues to discuss some of the approaches to tackling homophobia and how we can improve teachers’ confidence to tackle the issue. Using stories to tackle homophobia found that it can engage children but they react differently depending upon their age. This suggested that it is an appropriate approach for certain age groups but another approach might be more useful for others. Policies have also been found to be effective when tackling homophobia but research has found that policies outline re-active ways to tackling homophobia which, although they do need to be in place, are not as positive as pro-active ways to tackling the issue. Overall the article finds that we need to use a balanced variety of approaches to tackle homophobia from the ones discussed. This will enable children of all ages and abilities to engage with the topic and begin to think about the similarities and differences between themselves and LGBT people

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Section
Articles