Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-100). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss &rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR11835

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This study investigated factors that influence career choice and development for gay male school teachers. Ten gay educators participated in the investigation. Data collection methods involved two semi-structured personal interviews and one structured telephone interview for a total of 30 sampling units. Data analysis procedures included reviewing audiotapes, reading transcriptions, browsing documents, coding text units, consulting with mentors and peers, comparing coding categories with previous literature and research, and reflecting on emerging relationships among the data. Major findings relate to identity development, social and family attitudes, secrecy and disclosure, and career motivation. All of the participants described experiences of (a) forming a vocational identity as a school teacher and a sexual identity as a gay man, and (b) blending or merging these primary self-concepts through occupational expressions of advocacy and activism, gender role flexibility, or both. The data further indicate that (a) social bias against public education has a negative influence on career maintenance and performance, (b) family respect for school teachers has a positive influence on career choice, and (c) special case strategies help gay men circumvent the negative influence of social bias against them to enter the teaching profession. Most of the participating teachers revealed their primary reliance on "implicitly out" identity management strategies (Griffin, 1992) to alleviate fears of discrimination, public accusation, job loss, and impaired credibility. Additional qualitative evidence suggests that the need for gay self-disclosure varies with the potential for vocational self-expression in the teaching profession. In the course of their teaching careers, all of the participants reported either (a) compensating for some developmental lag or deficit experienced during childhood or adolescence, or (b) partially satisfying their developmental need to father children. Hypothetical associations among these major findings form the trilateral foundation of an emerging theory that more specifically explains factors that influence the career choice and development of gay male school teachers. This three-part framework reflects the interacting influences of identity integration, self-expression, and self-actualization and reciprocal effects of and on the teaching profession. The theory emerging from this investigation has practical applications for counselor and teacher education, as well as for career counseling. / Graduation date: 1999

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, May, 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. W. S.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1998. / Bibliography: leaves 119-129.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-281).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2009. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 48-02, page: .

Even though living openly is associated with better health, gay teachers are in an ambiguous position legally and socially when it comes to finding safe and successful ways to living openly while at work in K-8 schools. The purpose of this grounded theory study is to describe approaches gay teachers have found and employed to living openly in K-8 schools. From the interview data collected from eleven gay teachers, an identity development model was produced, which the researcher entitled The Gay Teacher's Workplace Visibility Process Model. No existing identity development models focus solely on the approaches gay teachers take to living openly in the K-8 school. The Gay Teacher's Workplace Visibility Process Model consists of four stages: becoming visible to administrators and other teachers, becoming visible to students, becoming visible to students' parent, and identity maintenance. It is hoped that this study will ultimately prompt more gay teachers to live openly as the model is intended to serve as a guide for future or current gay K-8 teachers who wish to live openly at work. This study also has implications for administrators and teachers, the first people gay teachers come out to. Administrators and other teachers can support gay teachers in becoming fully visible at work safely and successfully through their actions and words, which could potentially lead to more accepting school environments for everyone through the fostering of a culture of inclusivity.

This research provides an ethnographic and phenomenological study of how lesbian and gay educators in Western Australia employed adaptive rituals of conformity and nonconformity within their educational culture. This thesis depended on these educators telling their own story and it became a more complex study of their perception of and adaptation to homophobic distancing and repression. Through private interviews and collaboration with the co-participants in the research the study makes sense of the roles lesbian and gay educators enact in the educational culture in Western Australia around the time of Law Reform in 2002. The study is not an historical account but presents data from a specific historical context as a contribution to knowledge of how lesbian and gay educators view themselves and construct themselves in educational settings. The stories of everyday experience of Western Australian lesbian and gay educators present layers of gestured meanings, symbolic processes, cultural codes and contested sexuality and gender ideologies thereby reconstructing the reality of lesbian and gay educators. The research provides a range of embodied narratives and distinctive counter-narratives experienced by this group of educators in Western Australia. The study demonstrates that there are social practices in schooling that assist in the recognition and construction of their own gender identity even though the law in Western Australia at the time of writing, precluded the public promotion of lesbian and gay activities, and by association, silenced what many take to be their preferred mode of public behaviours. More importantly the study maps the extremely subtle processes involved in generating and expressing homophobia resulting in a sense of double invisibility, a constitutive silencing of personhood, which makes even the identification of rituals problematic. The very different stories reveal various interpretive strategies of belonging to the dominant homophobic culture, furthering our understanding of the contemporary identity formation issues of a hitherto invisible and silenced group of educators.

In this project I explore the connection between cultural and personal identity in the college classroom. Respondent interviews were conducted using open-ended questions, which began with a broad picture of the role the instructor played in the classroom and then focused more specifically on the issue of sexual orientation and the choices to disclose or not disclose orientation in the classroom. Thematic analysis was used to examine the interviews, upon the completion of the interviews being transcribed. RQ1: Do gay and lesbian instructors disclose their sexual orientation in the classroom? From this question, four themes emerged. These themes were disclosure not relevant, out of the classroom disclosure, students just know, and disclosure in the classroom. RQ2: What reasons do gay and lesbian instructors give for disclosing their sexual orientation in the classroom? Two themes, fears of disclosure and holding back, transpired from this question. RQ3: How do gay and lesbian instructors foster diversity in the classroom related to sexual orientation? Four themes were exposed from the question, and these themes were paradox of diversity, passing, mentoring, and identity not sexuality.