The Methodological Im/possibilities of Researching Sexuality Education in Schools: Working Queer Conundrums

• In Event: Queer Relationalities: Love, Friendship, and Other Conundrums of Educational Life

Abstract

This paper draws on theory to explore the potential of two approaches to analytical ‘messiness’ (Lather 2010) that may provoke ways of thinking about researching sexuality education and which hold possibilities for more queerly knowing the unexpected. It is argued that methodological conundrums that emerge in school-based sexuality education research can push ethnographers’ working queerly to develop capacities to think the unthought more fully. Drawing on data from two ethnographic case studies, this paper uses affect theory and the notion of aporias to more fully understand and begin to re-imagine the im/possibilities of researching queerly in schools. In foregrounding analytical conundrums, ethnographers can recognise and draw on the generative potential of paradox, uncertainty and ambiguity when researching in schools.

Author

• Kathleen Anne Quinlivan, University of Canterbury