The work of UW–Madison’s Mollie McQuillan received honorable mention recognition in the 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award competition being administered by the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division A.
McQuillan is an assistant professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
The dissertation being recognized, which McQuillan completed en route to earning her Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s Human Development and Social Policy program in 2019, is titled “Beyond Bathrooms: The Educational Policies, Practices, and Health of Gender-Expansive Students.”
McQuillan’s mixed-methods research examines the intersection of educational policy, organizational practices, and the health of gender-expansive students.
“American schools have become a central battleground in the controversy over policies intended to protect gender-expansive people,” McQuillan writes in her dissertation. “Those whose gender expression and felt identities do not match prescribed social norms for femininity or masculinity.”
According to her dissertation, gender-expansive youth face higher rates of social stressors, such as victimization, discrimination, and rejection within educational organizations. The consequences of these stressors related to students’ identities and gender expression can be poorer academic, physical, and mental health.
To understand these complex issues, McQuillan developed a model “that illustrates the nature of the relationships between state policies, school leadership, gender identity, and health.” From this model, she proposes that different levels — public policy, organizational, interpersonal, and individual — shape the experiences and health of gender-expansive students.
McQuillan looks at what school district leaders are currently doing and what educators need to support students. She then shifts the focus to understanding how this gender-based stress can influence physical health by investigating the relationship between stressors and inflammation in her dissertation.
Finally, McQuillan concludes that educational interventions may be integral to alleviating social stressors experienced by youth “by describing which youth may be most in need of additional support.”
Division A of AERA promotes research that defines and critiques the tenets of educational leadership, educational organizations, and how leadership impacts the administration of PK-12 educational spaces and their communities.
McQuillan, who has nearly a decade of experience as a public school teacher, was also a finalist for the Leadership for School Improvement Dissertation of the Year Award.