Investigating Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes Towards LGB Students in Luxembourg

This questionnaire study investigates the attitudes of pre-service teachers at the University of Luxembourg towards lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) students. Assessing this is crucial when it comes to guaranteeing equality in education, as prior research, such as on the Pygmalion effect, demonstrates that teachers’ perceptions of students may have an impact on student’s educational success. This impact can be positive but also negative. Detecting trends of negative attitudes in pre-service teachers may therefore represent a first step in protecting LGB-students from educational inequality. Possible explanatory variables, such as respondents' experiences with LGB people, religiosity, gender or even political orientation will be collected. The aim of the study is to add the aspect of sexual diversity in education to the Luxembourg Education Report 2023, which is entirely devoted to the topic of diversity. We hypothesize that negative attitudes of student teachers towards LGB students are associated with 1) little social contact with LGB people; 2) male gender; 3) stronger religious beliefs; 4) heterosexual orientation; 5) a right-wing, conservative political orientation.
Additionally, we examine whether hypergendering (hypermasculinity for men and hyperfemininity for women, i.e., the strict adherence to traditional gender roles and their stereotypes) influences the relationship between negative attitudes regarding LGB students. We hypothesize that 6) men with strong hypermasculinity display more negative attitudes than less hypermasculine men; we tentatively hypothesize that 7) women with strong hyperfemininity display more negative attitudes than less hyperfeminine women towards LGB students. All variables and their concrete assessment tools with respective answer options are displayed in the Survey Overview.