Abstract

• The aims of this study are to investigate the teachers’ knowledge and attitudes towards sexual minorities, to determine whether the teachers’ knowledge and attitudes vary according to age, qualification, teaching service and teaching position, to examine whether the teachers’ attitudes vary according to knowledge level and to investigate the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and attitudes towards sexual minority students. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted. For quantitative study, a set of questionnaire was used: knowledge questions with true-false items and attitude questions with five-point likert scale. For qualitative study, open-ended questions and interview were used. By using proportional stratified sampling method, a total of 210 teachers, 86 are senior teachers and 124 are junior teachers from Dawei Township, Tanintharyi Region were selected for sample. Descriptive statistics, Item Percent Correct (IPC), Independent Samples t Test, one-way ANOVA, Post-hoc Tukey HSD test and Pearson product moment correlation were utilized to analyse the data. Results indicated that most of the teachers were at the satisfactory level of knowledge concerning sexual minorities. Overall teachers’ knowledge varied depending on teachers’ personal factors such as, age and qualification. Findings revealed that the teachers held moderately positive attitude in such areas as “attitude towards lesbian” and “in giving equal rights to sexual minorities”. And, the teachers held moderately negative attitude in such areas as “attitude towards gay men” and “in being comfortable in the presence of sexual minorities”. It was also found that there were significant differences in teachers’ attitudes according to their age and knowledge level. The younger teachers had more positive attitude towards sexual minorities than the older teachers. There was a statistically significant association between teachers’ knowledge and attitudes towards sexual minorities (r =.24, p<0.01). It can be said that the teachers who were more knowledgeable about sexual minorities tend to have more positive attitude towards sexual minorities.