Not Another Brick in the Wall: Understanding How School Staff Support for LGBTQ+ Students is Shaped by the Broader School Context

The school context plays a central role in shaping the school experiences of sexually and gender diverse students in secondary and vocational education, who more often than their heterosexual, cisgender peers report negative school experiences. School staff’s supportive practices seem a promising way to alter these negative experiences, such as bullying victimization and microaggressions. However, sexually and gender diverse students consistently report lower levels of school staff support compared to their peers. To address this discrepancy, this study examines the ways in which staff’s supportive practices are shaped by other factors in the school context, such as policies, administrators, and student–staff relationships. Using qualitative interviews with Dutch secondary and vocational education school staff (N = 17), we conducted a thematic analysis of staff members’ perspectives on their supportive practices, barriers, and needs. The analysis identified ten interrelated school factors shaping staff’s opportunities and motivations to provide support. Furthermore, school staff’s sexual identity emerged as an important factor related to the barriers and opportunities they perceive in supporting sexually and gender diverse youth. Building on these findings, we updated an existing conceptual model of the whole school approach. The results highlight the need for coordinated, whole school interventions that move beyond isolated aims to alter staff practices.