School Cultures and Trans and Gender-diverse Children: Parents' Perspectives

Abstract

In the United Kingdom, trans and gender-diverse children are increasingly visible within the school system. We examined data obtained from 23 parents who are supportive of their trans and gender-diverse children. We draw on the insights of Freire (2000), who suggested that critical education in its widest sense is a basic element of progressive social change. Parents face interpersonal and structural limit-situations (Freire, 2000) while supporting their children in school cultures. But it is often parents teaching educators about trans and gender-diverse children producing changes to how schools are altering their practices in relation to (trans) gender. Nonetheless, many schools are advocating for trans and gender-diverse children in reactive ways, rather than having clear procedures and strategies in place. Parents welcome the dialogical flexibility this allows, but find the situation demanding and time consuming. However, parents have many concerns about bullying and peer pressure, which emphasizes their ability to only partly ensure the protection of their children at school. The importance of parents’ and children’s knowledge derived from their life experiences, and which they bring with them to school cultures is challenging gendered-limit-situations and the perception about who has the right to determine gender in school.