Abstract:
Transgender (trans) students, both binary and non-binary, are becoming more visible in schools across Australia and overseas. Although there are a range of responses by schools to their presence, these responses do not adequately improve the wellbeing and education of trans students. Parents of trans children and young people hold important funds of knowledge about how to support their children, and are advocates in a range of settings including schools. However, rather than view parents as allies, schools are resistant to the attempts of parents to negotiate inclusive conditions for their trans children and young people. This paper explores schools’ approaches to parent engagement and parent advocacy with parents of trans children and young people within Australia’s ‘culture of limitation’. In collaboration with an advocacy group of parents of trans children and young people, data is drawn from in-depth semi structured interviews with 18 parents of 15 Australian trans children and young people, aged between 2 and 16 when they first articulated their trans identity. Parents were asked about their experiences in supporting their children in educational settings. We found that schools struggle to frame how they can respond to the presence of trans children and young people, most often taking an approach that pathologises trans children and seeks to put in place individual accommodations, rather than work towards a trans-inclusive school culture. Schools are hampered by a fear of the (imagined) response of (other) parents within the culture of limitation. Discourses which open up space for the inclusion of trans identities are sometimes deployed to respond positively to parent engagement and advocacy, but this deployment is inconsistent. The experiences of parents of trans students in primary and secondary schools has parallels in the literature on the attempts by parents of students with a disability to create the conditions of inclusive education. Approaches to parent engagement need to be extended to inform whole of school approaches, rather than remain as a narrow focus on pedagogy and individual accommodation, broadening the concept of parent engagement to include building allyship with parent advocates. This research will inform schools and educational policy makers as to how engaging with advocate parents can improve conditions in schools for trans children, resulting in improved wellbeing and educational outcomes. Further research to understand the perspectives of educators and principals would be fruitful.