Teacher’s Attitudes and Willingness to Refer Sexual Minority Students to Special Education

<p>Research shows that cultural minority students are over-represented in special education services based on teacher bias and attitudes towards these cultural minority students. A cultural minority that has not been as widely researched is the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ). The purpose of this study is to determine if teacher’s bias and attitude towards LGBTQ students interferes with their ability to make special education referrals for sexual minority students (Hebl, 2000), who are students identified as LGBTQ. For the purpose of this study, a variety of teachers were asked to complete, two qualifying questions, a detailed demographic questionnaire, the brief RCOPE, the Homosexual Attitude Scale, the Riddle Scale (both measuring attitude and acceptance of sexual minority individuals), two vignettes, and a post-vignette question to determine if the participants’ personal biases and attitudes impact their willingness to refer sexual minority students to special education. A logistic regression was used to analyze data. All data was collected from teachers via Mechanical Turk (Mturk) through Amazon. It is hypothesized that teachers are more likely to make a special education referral for sexual minority students than heterosexual students based on personal biases.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy - School Psychology

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Services

Year dc:date.available

2019

Author dc:creator

• Forney, DiAne'

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Nina Ellis-Hervey
• Dr. Robbie Stewart
• Dr. Luis Aguerrevere

• LGBTQ
• sexual minority
• special education
• teacher attitude
• LBGTQ in special education
• Disability and Equity in Education
• Educational Psychology
• School Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/257

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.sfasu.edu:etds-1288