title: Belonging as a matter of social justice: LGBTQ+ students’ experiences and perspectives
Creators: name: Morantes-Africano, Leonardo
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 2025

description: Legal protections such as the UK Equality Act (2010) guarantee that LGBTQ+ students are given access to education. However, if they are not accepted, respected, and supported by their peers or teachers, their development of a sense of belonging in education, and in turn their educational experience and outcomes, could be adversely affected. This is the case presented in this thesis. As a qualitative project it focuses on the experiences and perspectives of ten selfidentified LGBTQ+ students completing post-compulsory education in a further and higher education college in England. Their mostly negative experience of school due to their queer identities and/or expressions contrasted to that in post-compulsory education. A central concern is that socially constructed (mis)understandings of a queer ontology, supported by hegemonic heteronormativity, places queer individuals at a disadvantage when those around them reject or avoid them. At the root of this we find the normative nature of early socialisation related to the rights and wrongs of gender identity and expression, which largely influences our responses towards gender/sexual minorities (Morantes-Africano, 2023).To articulate this as an issue related to learning, and therefore concerning education, this inquiry uses the notion of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007) to argue that there is new knowledge and language around gender/sexual diversity, such as non-binary and trans identities that are largely misunderstood by the general population due to a lack of collective interpretive tools to make sense of these. Given that educators are central to the educational experience of their students, if they are not offered professional learning about this, inclusive initiatives may not translate into educational practice. As a knowledge project, this thesis favours a standpoint epistemology to interpret how queer onto-epistemologies offer unique and valuable epistemic contributions to the research intentions. The use of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun &amp; Clarke, 2019; 2021) enabled the formulation of a framework of belonging for education, comprising personal and sociocultural factors to be considered, not only for LGBTQ+ students but for the larger student population: 1) identity, 2) personality, 3) needs, and 4) motivations, are part of the subjective dimensions of belonging. These are situated within 5) institutional opportunities, and a need to support both 6) students and 7) educators in their pedagogical practice. Learners joining or aspiring to join post-compulsory education are on a journey of being and becoming. The former is to be understood as intrinsic, such as our core identity and basic human needs, which are part of our nature. In addition to these, we have our personality and motivations, both of which are susceptible to change, therefore are part of our becoming. These subjective aspects (identity, personality, needs and motivations) are contingent to the external structures that influence our lived experience, such as the learning environment and the institutional approaches to support or otherwise minoritised individuals. The interplay of our identity and personality, with our needs and motivations, becomes a dance of internal and invisible aspects of ourselves, and those that we exteriorise, either as a choice or as a strategy to navigate complex social life. The situatedness of minoritised individuals in a predominantly heteronormative social practice places an extra onus on education to address injustices and inequalities. Therefore, both opportunities and support are necessary to foster a feeling of acceptance, respect, value, and support for queer lives. Aspects of support concern both educators and students, as caring for those who care is central to my argument that belonging is a matter of justice.