2018 Volume 16 Pages 36-47
In 2015, Ministry of Education published a report about sexual minority students, including those with Gender Identity Disorder, and it promoted the discussions about sexual minorities in school. Hidaka （2015） pointed out that very few teachers had taken any courses about LGBT at their universities, and highlighted their misconceptions and lack of knowledge about sexual minorities. This demonstrates the importance of providing students in Teacher Training Course with the opportunity to learn about sexual minorities. For example, sexual minority students often experience difficulties when they have Physical Education class that is gender segregated. In the reports published by HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH （2016） and by the Ministry of Education, the problems and supports concerning Health and Physical Education （H.P.E） class are especially stressed. It shows the importance of understanding of sexual minority students in these classes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of school teacher trainees about sexual minorities in order to make suggestions for the university teacher training courses for the inclusion of sexual minority students in H.P.E. The result of this investigation shows that normative masculinity tends to make sexual minorities invisible and reinforces homophobia and transphobia. Moreover, students who major in H.P.E demonstrated this tendency more than other students. This study demonstrates that the root causes of this result are binary gender system and heterosexism in sports. On the other hand, students who have learned about sexual minorities tend to be more interested in learning about them, and students who have some information about sexual minorities tend to be less homophobic and transphobic. Thus, it is necessary not only to have courses about sexual minorities in teacher training, but also to consider the ways in which such information outside the class could accessed.
