Incorporating LGBTQ Issues into Family Courses: Instructor Challenges and Strategies Relative to Perceived Teaching Climate

• Author: Abbie E. Goldberg,Katherine A. Kuvalanka,Ramona F. Oswald
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12034
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• Date: 01 December 2013

KATHERINE A. KUVALANKA Miami University

ABBIE E. GOLDBERG Clark University∗

RAMONA F. OSWALD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign∗∗

Incorporating LGBTQ Issues into Family Courses:

Instructor Challenges and Strategies Relative

to Perceived Teaching Climate

This study investigated the experiences of 42

college/university-level instructors with regard

to incorporating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-

gender, and queer (LGBTQ) content into their

family-oriented courses. Based on how support-

ive they rated their colleagues, departments,

and institutions for their teaching about LGBTQ

issues, and how open they deemed their students

to learning about such perspectives, partici-

pants were categorized as working in one of

three teaching climates: the least positive, mod-

erately positive, or the most positive. Notably,

the authors found that educators faced resis-

tance from other faculty members in addition to

students. Further, most faculty assessed their

students as open to learning about LGBTQ

issues, yet teaching about transgender and

Department of Family Studies and Social Work, Miami

University, 101 McGuffey Hall, Oxford, OH 45056

(kuvalaka@MiamiOH.edu).

∗Department of Psychology, Clark University, 950 Main

Street, Worcester, MA 01610-1477.

∗∗Department of Human and Community Development,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 263 Bevier

Hall, MC-180, 905 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL

61801.

Key Words: classroom, gay, higher education, lesbian,

teaching.

queer issues appeared to be particularly chal-

lenging for some. Perceived challenges varied

by the teaching climates in which participants

reportedly worked. The challenges and strate-

gies shared by participants have implications

for both faculty and administrators concerned

with creating more inclusive classrooms and

departments.

Prior to the 1990s, sexual orientation and

gender nonconformity were rarely discussed

in higher education, prompting scholars to

call for greater inclusion of these issues in

course curricula (Allen, 1995; Simoni, 1996).

Since the 1990s, college-level instructors in the

social sciences have increasingly incorporated

lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

(LGBTQ) issues into their courses. Despite this

progress, a national higher education survey

found that only slightly more than one half of

respondents felt that classrooms were accepting

of LGBT people, and only 22% reported

that course curricula adequately represented

the contributions of LGBT people (Rankin,

2003). Indeed, many instructors teach courses

without discussing explicitly the experiences

of LGBTQ persons and families (Hackman,

2012), and students—heterosexual, cisgender,

and LGBTQ-identified—may be ignorant about

such topics (Case, Stewart, & Tittsworth, 2009;

Family Relations 62 (December 2013): 699 – 713 699

DOI:10.1111/fare.12034