‘Getting to [un]know you’: opening up constructions and imaginations of youth

This paper rethinks education’s reliance on knowing who queer and trans youth are. It suggests that both desires to ‘know’ who youth are and the processes by which curriculum, policy, and scholarship come to know what is thought to be known about youth flattens and diminishes youths’ life experiences and what they might be/come. By examining the ideas that are thought to be known about queer and trans youth, the paper explores how these ideas tend to excise the specifics of youths’ lives, particularly along racial lines. Moreover, this paper considers how queer and trans adults’ desires to place queer and trans youth within historical lineages, present-day conundrums, and future imaginings limits youths’ own explorations and determinations of their own gendered and sexual presentations, expressions, and identities. In total, this paper asks: how might we get to unknow queer and trans youth?     

Navigating the complexity of qualitative research in postmodern contexts: assemblage,critical reflexivity,and communion as guides

For graduate students and other emerging qualitative researchers, the ever-evolving and sometimes conflicting perspectives, methodologies, and practices within various post-positivist frameworks (e.g. feminist, critical, Indigenous, participatory) can be overwhelming. Qualitative researchers working within postmodern contexts of multiplicity and ambiguity are tasked with working through challenges – related to methods, interpretation, and representation – throughout the research process. Through examining related literature and incorporating my own experiences, I explore ethical dilemmas that social justice-oriented qualitative researchers may encounter as a result of conflicting multiplicities of difference among researcher(s), participants, and readers. Such dilemmas include incongruent interpretations between participants and researchers, and participants’ and researchers’ conflicting desires about what should be shared, intercultural (mis)interpretations, rapport issues, and conflicts between research life and home life. I consider how combining the practices of attending to assemblages, engaging in critical reflexivity, and centralizing communion may be useful in navigating relationships and ethical dilemmas in qualitative research.     

Writing the queer self: Using autobiography to mediate inclusive teacher education in Canada

Writing the queer self involves locating the self within a broad understanding of queer that recognises a spectrum of sex, sexual and gendered subjects. In this article, I discuss how I write the queer self to link the personal to my positional practice as a gay teacher educator. I overview my work with Agape, which is a focus group that I initiated in my university's teacher education programme to explore sex, sexual and gender differences in education and culture. I explore how I link my queer autobiography to the professional and the pedagogical, and how I use it to engender deliberations about queer presence, representation and place in education. I conclude by speaking on the importance of doing this work as an ethical project for social justice and educational transformation.     

Asking queer(er) questions: epistemological and methodological implications for qualitative inquirers

This collection of distinct scholarly essays deliberatively turns to queer experience and theorizing as a resource for constructing vibrant qualitative research designs. Queer theory offers a breadth of epistemological and methodological possibilities for qualitative projects that are too frequently overlooked for many reasons. These reasons include frequently strict association of queer theory with queer research topics and researchers, as well as a concurrent reluctance to interrogate the representational needs of heterosexist culture served by the metaphor of the ‘closet.’ Queer theory also compels inquiry that takes up the unique circumstances of queer subjects. Locating educational inquiry within globally complex socio-historical dynamics and a post-Obergefell/post-2016 election U.S. context, this article poses multiple trajectories through which various scholars explore queer(er) qualitative inquiry in educational studies. These perspectives invite researchers to rethink qualitative inquiry designs through engagement with the queer, inclusive of research topics not initially perceived to be queer.     

Bringing our communities to the research table: the liberatory potential of collaborative methodological practices alongside LGBTQ participants

Research on and about queer people and topics in higher education continues to evolve, expand, and push boundaries on identity, policy, and programming, increasingly informed by our narratives and experiences. Thus far, this work has done little to dismantle the imposed binary of researcher and subject(s), relegating queer research and practice as something that is done ‘on,’ ‘to,’ or ‘for’ queer people, rather than ‘with’ them. Collaborative ethnographic methodologies and communities of practice (CoP) provide alternative modes of scholarship and practice that build queer people’s agency through active involvement in research and social change processes. Situated in two of our own examples, our purpose is to explore big questions and raise even more. This article calls for a further queering of LGBTQ research in higher education by utilizing collaborative methodologies such as CoP and collaborative ethnography to improve the strategies, practices, and knowledge of campus queer communities and imagining new democratic and liberatory realities together.     

Recycling Piaget: Posthumanism and making children’s knowledge matter

A growing body of research incorporates children’s perspectives into the research process. If we are to take children’s perspectives seriously in education research, research methodologies must be capable of addressing issues that matter to children. This article engages in a theoretical discussion that considers how a posthuman research methodology can support such an effort. Piaget’s early and lesser known qualitative studies on children’s conception of the world are re-read along with Karen Barad’s posthuman theory, using Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. Through a plastic reading of Piaget and Barad, I consider how a posthuman theoretical framework might contribute to research seeking to access children’s perspectives. Before concluding, I reflect on some ethical concerns regarding posthuman research in education.     

Educating queer sexual citizens? A feminist exploration of bisexual and queer young women’s sex education in Tasmania,Australia

There is a well-documented absence of inclusive school-based sex and relationships education (SRE) for Australian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. Moreover, relatively few studies specifically examine how bisexual and queer-identifying young Australian women experience SRE. This qualitative study addresses the gap and contributes new perspectives by examining bisexual and queer young women’s experiences of school-based SRE in the state of Tasmania through the lens of sexual citizenship. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 Tasmanian bisexual and queer young women, we argue that biomedical, risk-based and heteronormative approaches to SRE reduce young women’s sexual health literacy. By framing SRE around the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’, this article provides important guidance on how SRE can more effectively provide bisexual and queer young women with the skills they need to be effective, engaged sexual citizens.     

Muslim researcher researching Muslim youth: reflexive notes on critical ethnography,positionality and representation

As a Muslim researcher conducting a critical ethnography about/with/for Muslim youth and their school experiences, at this time of intensified Islamophobia and overwhelming discourses of hate against Muslims, the boundaries of the personal and the academic become blurry and confusing. This paper emerges from my subjective/academic experiences as a Muslim researcher, and my reflections on reflexivity, positionality and representation while conducting my ethnographic research in a high-school setting with Muslim youth. In this paper, I present a review of the different concepts of critical ethnography that are framing my research decisions and I highlight the complexity of the insider/outsider positionality for a Muslim researcher doing research with Muslim youth and the intersections of religion, gender, class, ethnicity and age in positioning her in the field. The paper presents different ethical dilemmas that I have encountered during the first six months of my fieldwork.     

Queer trepidations and the art of inclusion

Abstract

Contemporary research and pedagogy telated to sexualities and schooling in Australia, Aotearoa1/New Zealand and the United States often focuses on ways to alleviate homophobia and heterosexism in the hope of creating schools that are more inclusive of lesbian and gay (and very rarely bisexual, transgender and intersex2) (LGBTI) teachers and students. Within this paradigm, the notion of what comprises sexualities is often taken as given. Alternatively, researchers and educators may invoke essentialising narratives in order to make arguments for the inclusion of students and teachers who adopt LGBTI identifications. Drawing on a theoretical framework influenced by the work of Deborah Britzman3 and other queer theorists within and outside education this article interrogates these strategies of inclusion. In particular, I focus on research methodologies and pedagogies related to sexualities and schooling devised in the name of inclusion of young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT)4 in secondary educational contexts. This analysis, which is based on my doctoral studies, commences with a consideration of queer theories and the art of inclusion. Subsequent to this I analyse pedagogies of inclusion and methodologies of inclusion, and, their nexus with queer theories.     

Growth of Reflection in Teaching: Reconciling the Models

Although all teachers are expected to be “role models,” discursive trajectories reaching back to the West’s gay liberation pressure queer teachers to be role models in specific ways – by “coming out” and helping queer students out of their “time of difficulty.” Paradoxically, discourses that construct children as innocent and queers‐as‐a‐threat make it difficult for queer teachers not only to take up these positions as role models but to be visible in schools. In this article, I explore the discourses that shape queer teachers’ understanding of touch, sexuality, confidentiality, the private versus public domain, and pedagogical responsibility within the schooling context. Informed by Foucault, I analyze the interview data of three Ontario queer teachers to investigate the ways in which queers‐as‐a‐threat and teacher‐as‐role‐model influence the negotiation of their ethical dilemmas regarding their student crushes.     

Coming out,rolling over,and playing model: possibilities beyond the trope of queer students “at-risk”

In this article, I explore one lesbian teacher’s ethical dilemmas and resulting disappointment related to the lack of participation by queer students in the Gay Straight Alliance she helped to create. Her dilemmas hinge on the paradoxical subject position of queer teacher in tension with the “coming out imperative” and intersecting with discursive articulations of teacher-as-role model and queer students as a population “at-risk.” Grounded in scholarship that describes the discursive production of queer teacher and queer students, I explore the ways in which one group of queer students resist notions of “at-riskness” and the resulting impact on their teacher.     

Popular culture and moral panics about ‘children at risk’: revisiting the sexualisation-of-young-girls debate

In an attempt to resist moral panics over children's media consumption, and especially girls' consumption of hyper-sexualised popular media, this paper aims to offer a more positive account of popular culture and young children's, especially girls', engagement with it. By adopting a historical approach to modern childhood and the moral panics associated with it, I argue that the consumption of entertainment media and popular culture is a leisure activity which, rather than facilitating or reinforcing female subordination and youth vulnerability, can be seen as a possible source of knowledge about sexuality, about the self and the social world. I draw on findings from qualitative research conducted in Athens with young schoolgirls aged 10–12 years about their favourite popular icons in order to examine the variety of their engagements with, readings and practices of popular culture. Their discursive accounts reveal the intricate ways in which pre-teenage girls make sense of fandom and stardom, discuss taste, fashion and body aesthetics, and construct notions of attractiveness and ethical selfhood.     

Sexual harassment among adolescents of different sexual orientations and gender identities

This article examines (a) variation in rates of sexual harassment across mode (e.g., in-person, online) and type of harassment, (b) the impact of sexual harassment (i.e., distressing vs. non-distressing), and (c) how sexual harassment is similarly and differently experienced across sexual orientation and gender identity groups. Data were collected as part of the Teen Health and Technology online survey of 5,907 13 to 18 year-old Internet users in the United States. Past year sexual harassment was reported by 23–72% of youth, depending upon sexual orientation, with the highest rates reported by lesbian/queer girls (72%), bisexual girls (66%), and gay/queer boys (66%). When examined by gender identity, transgender youth reported the highest rates of sexual harassment – 81%. Overall, the most common modes for sexual harassment were in-person followed by online. Distress in the form of interference with school, family, and/or friends; creating a hostile environment; or being very/extremely upset was reported by about half of the sexually harassed bisexual girls and lesbian/queer girls, 65% of the gender non-conforming/other gender youth, and 63% of the transgender youth. Youth with high social support and self-esteem were less likely to report sexual harassment. Findings point to the great importance of sexual harassment prevention for all adolescents, with particular emphasis on the unique needs and experiences of youth of different sexual orientations and gender identities. Socio-emotional programs that emphasize self-esteem building could be particularly beneficial for reducing the likelihood of victimization and lessen the impact when it occurs.     

Analyzing Whispers: college students’ representation and reproduction of sociocultural discourses about bodies,relationships, and (hetero)sexuality using a mobile application

Previous research about college students’ social media usage emphasizes social media practices, often ignoring the content that students’ post. Increasing knowledge about the language that college students use to describe their intimate relationships can inform student affairs practice. Using a digital ethnographic data collection approach and queer theoretical framework, this paper explores the dominant discourses about race, sexuality, and relationships circulated in a mobile social networking application. This paper used content analysis to describe the meaning of text and images produced by college-aged youth in the US. Through this analysis of social media content, I contend that college students engage in the complex representations and reproductions of sociocultural norms about bodies, sexuality, and relationships and that these representations and reproductions influence campus climate. I develop implications for student affairs administrators.     

Queer pedagogy,educational practice and lesbian and gay youth

Our article explores the potential that queer paradigms and pedagogies hold for affirming sexual diversity in secondary schools. In understanding the operation of schools as heteronormalising institutions, it is possible to move beyond viewing queer youth as a disenfranchised minority group requiring reparation within an equity framework (a process that we suggest operates simultaneously to legitimate heterosexuality and to reinforce the abnormality of same-sex desire). Using research that we have undertaken with lesbian and gay youth in New Zealand secondary schools, and drawing on queer, post modern and feminist theoretical threads, we explore three (hetero) normalising processes experienced by the queer participants in their schools; the maintenance of silences, the pathologisation of (homo)sexualities, and the policing of gender boundaries. We close by exploring how several queer pedagogical features - creating venues, abnormalising the normal, dissolving the homo/hetero binary and forming alliances - could be used in order to affirm the sexual diversity of secondary school students.     

‘It gets narrower’: creative strategies for re-broadening queer peer education

Using collaborative performance ethnography in community- and school-based settings, sex education has the potential to challenge at-risk narratives for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) youth. This paper problematises the youth-led drama project Epic Queer to test the ‘queer’ potential of youth-driven initiatives at the school and community level, and to reject the singularity of victimised and ‘at-risk’ narratives so pervasive in sex education internationally about queer youth. By drawing on the It Gets Better Project as an example of widespread but narrowing social media texts encouraging normativity, deferred pleasure and a happiness narrative, this paper argues for the potential of performance-based arts engagement for re-expanding queer youth subjectivities.     

“No,We Should Do It”: Youth Training Youth in Activist Research Methods

The Urban Review - This article explores a 9-month process of youth research capacity-building, beginning with the training of high school and college aged researchers in qualitative methodologies...     

Editorial

In this article I make two claims with respect to the ethics, truth and politics of qualitative research. The first is that confronting ethics, truth and politics in research is in effect a confrontation with the self. Although this may appear to be self‐evident, in qualitative research in particular, such an assertion needs to be consciously made and recognised.

The second related claim is that there is no single set of rules or practices that govern the ethics, truth and politics of a research project. In effect, the ethics, truth and politics of a research project are contextually driven and simultaneously contextually bound. This does not imply that a laissez‐faire ‘anything goes’ approach is defensible. On the contrary, the qualitative researcher is constantly and consistently called upon to consciously and deliberately engage with the ethical, truth and political implications of his research and writing. For the researcher ethical epiphanies are rare. Confronting and making an ethical decision is a demanding process, not an event in the life of a researcher. To extend this second point beyond the boundaries of South Africa, I draw on the works of local and international philosophers of education who offer similar arguments.     

‘Don't talk about what you don't know’: on (not) conducting research with/in Indigenous contexts

This article raises the recurrent question whether non-indigenous researchers should attempt to research with/in Indigenous communities. If research is indeed a metaphor of colonization, then we have two choices: we have to learn to conduct research in ways that meet the needs of Indigenous communities and are non-exploitative, culturally appropriate and inclusive, or we need to relinquish our roles as researchers within Indigenous contexts and make way for Indigenous researchers. Both of these alternatives are complex. Hence in this article I trace my learning journey; a journey that has culminated in the realization that it is not my place to conduct research within Indigenous contexts, but that I can use ‘what I know’ – rather than imagining that I know about Indigenous epistemologies or Indigenous experiences under colonialism – to work as an ally with Indigenous researchers. Coming as I do, from a position of relative power, I can also contribute in some small way to the project of decolonizing methodologies by speaking ‘to my own mob’.