Activating Adult Allies from a Rural Community on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Student Issues in Schools Using Photovoice

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) students face hostility and stressors in the school environment that threaten their mental and educational well-being.  Such problems include low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, absenteeism, and low academic achievement.  To counter hostility in schools, LGBTQ students have formed Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), which engage in a number of activities, including cultivating allies.  This study reports findings from adults in a community in the rural South who attended a photovoice exhibit sponsored by a GSA, which focused on the issues facing LGBTQ students.  Study research questions included: How did the GSA photovoice exhibit affect adult attendees cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally?  What were the strengths and limitations of the event, and how could it have been improved?

METHODS: The intervention used in this project was photovoice, which is a community-based participatory research approach in which participants use photography to explore problems that affect their community and develop action steps to address those problems.  Themes that emerged from the GSA students’ photos included reinforcement of gender norms, homophobic and transphobic bullying, little to no representation of diverse sexual and gender identities, and that school personnel do little to address the problems of LGBTQ students.  The GSA held a public gallery-style exhibit to share the results from their photovoice project with school personnel, other students, family members, and community members.  Following this exhibit, adult attendees were invited to take an online mixed-methods survey about their experiences with the event.  Twenty adults responded to the survey.  Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and qualitative data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis with a conventional approach, which aims at describing phenomena and allowing themes to emerge from the data. 

RESULTS:  Results showed that 85% of adult stakeholders reported that the event made them think about issues that they had not previously considered.  Qualitative results showed that these issues included the struggles LGBTQ youth face: feeling “isolated” and “judged” because of their identity, facing hostility at a young period in life, being rejected by friends or family members, and having internal struggles about their identity.  Other issues prompted by the event included issues related to gender identity, expression, and non-conformity. 

The most common emotions that adults experienced at the event included feeling energized, concern for the youth, and proud of the youth.  Further, 81% of the adults indicated that they would take action or behave differently as a result of the event.  Actions described included supporting and affirming LGBTQ students, being conscious of language and using gender neutral language, and confronting bias in themselves and in others. 

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The photovoice exhibit seemed to act as a “trigger event,” and adults noted influential aspects about the event, which included student leadership and voice in the project, use of creative materials (i.e., photos), and the opening of dialogue about often silenced issues.  The results indicate that photovoice is a promising, school- and community-based strategy for LGBTQ students to activate adult allies in their local community.