inclusive, specifically naming gender diversity, providing indispensable information, and showing a celebration of gender.
• Improve school policies and procedures
To support teachers’ understanding of gender challenges there needs to be improvement to school policy and procedures to include anti-bullying, harassment, and discrimination policies. These policies should have clear and concise definitions with detailed descriptions and manifestations of gender discriminative language and behaviours (Reygan, 2019). Even though the study found no indication of transphobic bullying, the DoE issued ‘Challenging Homophobic Bullying in Schools’ guide will prove beneficial to teachers. This document focuses on creating an inclusive teaching and learning environment by defining gender terms like transgender, heterosexism, and transphobia. What is more, the document tackles myths about the LGBTIQ+ community and shares dialogues about homophobic bullying in schools together with teacher responses. By providing schools with such resources, teachers will be provided with detailed procedures on how to adequately deal with complaints of gender discrimination and harassment (Reygan, 2019). However, teachers also require more structured support in terms of guidelines to help develop their professional capacities in order to support learners, colleagues, parents, and others seeking refuge to disclose their gender or sexual identity. By adopting uniformed procedures, such as recording incidences of transphobic bullying, harassment, and discrimination in a formal report will provide all teachers with a collective standpoint in the intervention of transphobia. These recommended strategies have the potential to support primary school teachers to become more receptive to transgender and other non-conforming gender identity within the school context.
• Supportive leadership-management
For teachers to adequately implement trans-inclusive procedures and policy, there needs to be adequate support from school leadership management. Bartholomeus and Riggs (2021) proclaim that to achieve trans-inclusion in schools, leadership-management needs to supply their teacher staff with appropriate resources, adequate training time, and sufficient funding.
This together with collective action will ensure that teacher trans-inclusive training then filters into classrooms effectively and efficiently.
• Realising trans-inclusive practice and language
The findings in this study showed that teachers struggled with gendered practices and transinclusive language. To facilitate inclusivity, it is essential for teachers to reflect on daily practices and language that enforce gender (Francis, 2017). This study recommends undertaking a reflexive language approach to assist teachers in identifying seemingly natural comments, praise, or reprimands that enforce gender binary in schools, and provide practical solutions to shift into an inclusive stance. Language is an integral part of everyday life and therefore it is imperative for teachers to be able to directly challenge homophobic and transphobic language that presents in classrooms or in school. This can only be achieved by attempting to realise trans-inclusive practice.
• Allocating resources and training for teachers
The realisation of trans-inclusion cannot be achieved without the proper allocation of resources and training for all stakeholders. The study recommends that primary school teachers be provided with resources such as information articles, storybooks, and revised textbooks, as well as other teaching aids such as posters that are free from transphobic insinuations and depictions (Reygan, 2019). However, it is equally important for teachers, school faculty, and any other individuals who come into contact with schools, either through work or on a volunteer basis, to undergo sensitivity training (Abaver & Cishe, 2018).
Sensitivity training will allow for individuals to become self-aware of prejudices and learn to be more empathetic to others through the dynamic of group interactions. Sensitivity training was proposed by the teachers in this study as participants understood that speaking with transgender and other non-conforming gender identities would assist teachers to be more perceptive to subjectivities.
• Functioning with the immediate community
It is important to note that primary schools rely on the immediate community to function satisfactorily. The study recognises that teachers cannot function independently to communities and therefore recommend inviting the parents and other members of the community to be part of trans-inclusive initiatives (Robinson et al., 2017). These invitations should detail what is intended on being addressed such as gender identity, sexuality education, and gender diversity, and provide the community with the opportunity to engage in an orderly manner. By doing this, the school serves as a change agent and extends their teaching and learning environments to all members of the community.
• Maintaining harmonious teaching and learning
The findings suggest that primary school teachers defend transgender developments in school, however teachers need support to create and maintain harmonious teaching and learning environments. This study recommends that the responsibility of trans-inclusion should not fall exclusively on Life Orientation teachers, but that all subject areas should be open to including gender and sexually diverse narratives (Francis, 2019). By introducing gender diversity to subjects such as language, art, history, mathematics, and comprehensive sexuality education, the gender inclusive narrative will become repetitive, awarding teachers and learners a greater opportunity to learn about social constructions of gender. There will be resistance to change and arguments that gender and sexual diversity lessons are not practical, however teachers are capable of finding innovative ways to teach topics. For instance, teachers can start with working with learners and evaluate library books that use homophobic and transphobic language or use silences to exclude gender diversity (Reygan, 2019). Then, initiatives can gradually move from identification of transphobia to understanding how transphobia hinders development, and eventually celebrating diversity by acknowledging days of gender significance such as South African Pride Month or International Transgender Day of Visibility (Bartholomeus & Riggs, 2021).