Teacher Affirmation and Adolescent Well-Being: A Multilevel Analysis of Pronoun Use, Mattering, Loneliness, Safety, and Bias-Based Bullying.

Identity-affirming teacher practices, such as using correct pronouns, may act as Identity Safety Cues for individual students and the wider school climate. Participants were 42,088 Canadian adolescents in grades 7-12 (age M = 14.6, SD = 1.8; 49.3% girls, 4.0% gender diverse, 15.1% 2SLGBTQIA+). Multilevel models tested associations among teacher pronoun use, bullying victimization (general and bias-based), and well-being (mattering, loneliness, safety). Bias-based victimization was associated with worse outcomes. School level pronoun affirmation was associated with higher well-being for the student body but not with a reduced slope of bias-based bullying victimization. In highly supportive climates, the negative association with mattering was stronger at severe bullying levels, consistent with a healthy context paradox. Teacher pronoun use may be a broadly shared protective climate asset.