Challenges facing LGBTQ people In this
presentation I'm looking at challenges faced by LGBTQ people in general as
Learners and challenges facing the lecturers. In general LGBTQ people face the
following challenges they experience more mental health issues than the general population
and we're talking about depression anxiety and suicidal ideation reports show that many of
them are excluded and discriminated against in the workplace and in their communities they
suffer exclusion by religiou
s groups and they may be denied employment and promotions and
suffer from harassment abuse and violence more than the rest of us there are many challenges
facing LGBTQ learners for example they are in the minority they have less visibility remember
gender is not a visible characteristic despite people making assumptions to the contrary
there may be further discrimination or lack of support uh due to intersectionality with
the other nine equality grounds such such as the intersection of gend
er with race
ethnicity whether one is able-bodied or not uh socioeconomic status membership of
the traveling Community uh amongst others access to gender neutral facilities such
as bathrooms and changing rooms can be problematic Furthermore LGBTQ issues
events histories Heroes and role models are not covered in many classes they're
not covered in the assigned readings or assignments there's also a fear of being
outer particularly when one does not wish to be outed and all of this leads to
a
sense of not being supported while one is learning and on the the other hand lecturers are
also facing some issues for instance they may not have enough guidance or training for lecturers
they may not know how to invade LGBTQ topics into their curriculum they may feel uncomfortable
talking about the issues they may also have a fear of being out of themselves and just because
they are LGBTQ people doesn't mean that they want to be visible allies to other LGBTQ students and
they want their
own privacy to be protected and there are two ways to look at any problem and the
first way is What's called the deficit uh based approach and this promotes the idea that there is
something wrong with LGBTQ people and that if they were fixed the problem would be solved whereas
the resource-based approach considers everyone as having something to contribute that they have
unique insights and perspectives that are valuable and these insights could be based on struggle
with the status quo dea
ling with adversity and perspectives from everyday shared experiences
and these are all valuable and under this approach lecturers are provided with the necessary
resources to create inclusive content and learning environments and here's a list of reflect Ive
questions that I've adapted from Deer 2008 which could be applied to your own curriculum to test
it for its level of inclusivity and question one is the diversity of your students reflected
in your lesson plans and remember that some c
haracteristics are not visible gender is not
a visible characteristic despite um Tendencies to make assumptions in this regard now just be
careful with the questions uh it these are not accusatory these are just to get you thinking um
second question is the language in your learning materials non-racist sexist and discriminatory
it's not an accusation that you are doing this sometimes the materials are coming from other
sources uh they may give us uh opportunities uh for discussion and chal
lenge in the classroom
um how often do you review your resources and curriculum for uh diversity and inclusion our
negative attitudes act actively challenged um in the classroom um do students do this is it
done in a respectful way and so on are Society stereotypes being challenged um ones that we
encounter in reading materials and so on that you have absolutely no control of um do you actively
avoid using stereotypes in classroom resources and examples um do you promote multiculturalism
i
n lessons and obviously this probably depends on the audience that you are teaching to and
the diversity that they actually have and do you actively reference and use examples from a
from different Traditions cultures religions and so on um does your curriculum feature the name
of let's say a transgender scientist a traveler Community member who's a researcher entrepreneur
mathematician and so on just depending on the subject that you're teaching and a nice task um
to set yourself or your s
tudents is uncovering the contributions of LGBTQ people maybe in relation to
um the subjects that you teaching for instance um researching a famous LGBTQ actor alive or dead
maybe a famous LGBTQ scientist mathematician entrepreneur and so on and to actually look at
the contributions that they have made to their field and finally this is a reference for
the Deer document that I mentioned earlier.
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