LGBTQ self-efficacy in the social studies

Abstract

Multicultural education, in some capacity, is a part of nearly every teacher education program in the country. Studies have shown, though, that this multicultural education does not often include issues of gender non-conformity and sexuality as a part of the instruction. Given these experiences in teacher preparation programs, we wanted to investigate pre-service and in-service social studies teachers׳ sense of self-efficacy in working with LGBTQ youth, teaching LGBTQ content, and addressing LGBTQ bias in school context. Using a Likert-scale we assessed the self-efficacy of 47 pre-service teachers. We found that the teachers had the highest sense of self-efficacy working with LGBTQ students and families. The participants reported a lower sense of self-efficacy teaching LGBTQ content and the lowest sense of self-efficacy addressing bias against LGBTQ individuals in commercial teaching materials and school contexts. The results of this study reveal the need for social studies teacher educators to be purposeful in the inclusion of these topics in their teacher preparation courses.