Are We There Yet? Educators as LGBTQ Advocates and Book Clubs as Professional Development

Abstract

This dissertation examines Rainbow Advocates: An Educator’s Book Club, a book club study designed for educators wherein they read three works of LGBTQ young adult literature in Summer 2020. Purposes of the book club study include a consideration of how participating educators’ experiences with LGBTQ youth, literary materials, and training compare to past research. This dissertation includes an assessment of their readiness to handle LGBTQ issues in school sites and an evaluation of book clubs and reading LGBTQ young adult literature as a method of professional development for educators. In doing so, this dissertation draws on reader responses as per Rosenblatt’s Reader-Response Theory (1978) and employs ethnography as described by Creswell and Creswell (2018), respectively, as a theoretical framework and methodology. The goal of this research is to help educators and researchers replicate similar studies and to realize ways of improving education through the sharing of experiences and thoughts about YA literature with LGBTQ themes and characters.