Educating for diversity: An informative evaluation of the rainbow youth sexuality and gender diversity workshops

Abstract

This report describes an evaluation of Rainbow Youth’s Sexuality and Gender Diversity Workshops (or Rainbow Youth’s Education Package) for students in secondary education. Rainbow Youth has been delivering Sexuality and Gender Diversity workshops in schools since the 1990s. The programme uses a targeted approach (i.e. where a number of classes from the same school participate in the workshops) to improve the climate of schools with regard to sexuality and gender diversity and to reduce bullying. It involves two one-hour sessions, which are divided between content pertaining to sexuality and gender diversity. The programme is delivered by an educator employed by Rainbow Youth, and volunteer storytellers from the GLBTQI community. Two schools in Auckland participated in this evaluation. We begin this report with a review of literature addressing bullying based on sexuality and gender diversity. Following this, we present the indings from the evaluation. The methodology of the evaluation involved pre- and post-workshop questionnaires which generated quantitative and qualitative data. Data were collected from 229 Year 9 and 10 students during the sexuality diversity workshops and 237 Year 9 and 10 students during the gender diversity workshops.