Pervasive bias-based bullying of sexual and gender minority youth amid often hostile school climates signals the importance of systems approaches to effect change. Nevertheless, most research on bullying victimization tends to adopt either lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)-specific approaches or broader approaches that omit mention of LGBT youth. We conducted a qualitative study, with the systems view of school climate as an organizing analytical framework, to explore determinants of school climate for LGBT youth and strategies for intervention. In-depth, semistructured interviews with 16 key informants, including teachers, school staff, administrators, frontline community providers, and experts on bullying victimization of LGBT youth, illustrate reciprocal and multilevel factors that produce school climates, which in turn foster or prevent bullying of LGBT youth. Not only do distal factors (e.g.,LGBT-affirmative legislation, targeted resource allocation for LGBT programming) impact school microsystems, but proximal factors in the microsystem, including enacted homophobia and transphobia through multilateral interpersonal interactions, also influence meso-and macrolevel phenomena, such as the values and mission of the school. Participants recommended multilateral interventions and training that address both proximal and distal contexts of school social ecologies, including teacher-student, peer-to-peer (e.g., gay-straight alliances), and teacher-administrator interactions; behavioral health professional roles and responsibilities; school curricula and libraries; school-board engagement with individual schools; LGBTinclusive policies; targeted resource allocation; and systemwide accountability. Positive school climates for LGBT youth are promoted through multilevel and reciprocal interventions that support social, psychological, and physical safety not just for LGBT students but for all students.
Public Policy Relevance StatementThis study highlights the ways in which proximal and distal factors reciprocally produce school climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth and their influence on bullying victimization. At the school microsystem level, multilateral interpersonal interactions (i.e., teacher-student, peer-peer, teacher-administrator, etc.) and LGBT-inclusive curricula and library holdings can contribute to promoting inclusion and preventing enacted homophobia and transphobia. However, LGBT-affirmative school policies and legislation at exosystem and macrosystem levels, supported by targeted resource allocation, engaged school boards, and accountable administrators and school districts, are vital to creating positive school climates. A positive school climate for LGBT students promotes the social, psychological, and physical safety not just of sexual and gender minority students but of all students.