Evaluating a gender diversity workshop to promote positive learning environments

Abstract

Drawing on data from an Aotearoa/New Zealand study of more than 230 secondary students, this article evaluates the potential of a 60-min gender diversity workshop to address bullying and promote positive environments for learning. Students completed pre- and postworkshop questionnaires. The authors used descriptive statistics to summarize results and conducted t-tests to assess the statistical significance of changes from before the workshop to immediately after the workshop. The authors used thematic analysis to analyze open-ended questionnaire responses. In summary, 237 students (M age = 13.7 years) attending 10 workshops participated in the study. More than 80% of students thought the gender diversity workshop would reduce bullying in schools, and 94% of participants reported that they would recommend the workshop to other young people. There was a significant increase in valuing (p < .001) and understanding (p < .001) gender-diverse people before and after the workshop. School cultures were largely perceived to be hard for gender-diverse students; however, many respondents reported a desire to be supportive of their gender-diverse peers. Reducing bullying related to gender identity and expression is very likely to have a positive effect on the mental health and educational achievement of young people. Brief diversity workshops, as a part of a wider suite of educational reforms, have the potential to create safer environments for learning.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 22 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.