Methodological Freedom: A Journey

• In Event: Living It Out: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry as Politic and Practice in the Academy

Abstract

Captured in the form of an open letter to methodological conservatives in the field of education, the author discusses her journey to tenure as a scholar whose approaches to research as well as topics of research are typically viewed by traditionalists as failing to meet normative standards of the field. Recounting her decision-making process and experiences with the politics of engaging in arts-based inquiry, critical discourse analysis, as well as theoretical research, the presentation offers a candid discussion of the consequences of engaging in work that disrupts narrow and often highly anti-intellectual conceptions of what counts as research in the study of education. Building from this analysis, she speaks to what made it possible for her to achieve tenure as a disruptive scholar, and the structural changes she deemed necessary to rupture stifling contemporary knowledge production regimes in the field of education.

Author

• Nana Osei-Kofi, Oregon State University