Queer Behind the Camera: The Secret Life of the Queer Educational Researcher

• In Event: Disrupting “Safe Spaces” With Queer Bodies: Exploring Perceptions of Safety and Vulnerability as Teachers and Researchers

Abstract

Objective: This presentation explores issues of sexual and gender identity from the perspective of the educational researcher working in formal classroom settings. I argue that queer researchers are in a unique position to make visible their sexual and gender identities in ways that are not possible for other adults working in the American school system.

Theoretical framework: This presentation draws on queer theoretical frameworks (Britzman, 1995, 1998; Browne & Nash, 2010; Martin, 1994) to advance two arguments: that there exists in America’s education systems a culture of ‘sexmuteness’ surrounding exploration of sexuality and gender identities; and that the queer educational researcher is in a unique position to disrupt this code of silence.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: In this presentation, I offer my body as one site of inquiry, demonstrating how gender and sexual identities can be both inscribed and rewritten through playful negotiation of gender and sexual markers (Butler, 2004; Halberstam, 2005). I will demonstrate strategies and materials I have employed to mark my body as both queer and genderqueer and provide stories about how these efforts have been interpreted by teachers and students in both primary and secondary classrooms.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: The specific materials used in this presentation will include:
• Physical materials I have used to ‘queer’ my identity, including clothing and binding and packing materials;
• My body, to demonstrate decisions I have made about gesture and how to move through formal school spaces in ways that mark myself as queer; and
• Audio and video recordings from research sites.

The discussion of gender and sexual identity performance will be supplemented with recent theoretical work discussing the development and subversion of these clusters of identities, with an emphasis on what Britzman (1998) calls the “curious limit” to how Western society thinks about the role of sex and sexuality: “the dominant insistence upon the stability of bodies, the body as a fact, transmitting obvious information” (p. 63).

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: This presentation will argue against the dominant assumption in educational research that the researcher must adopt the role of “neutral observer” who, along with the devices used to record classroom activity, must find ways to disappear from participants’ awareness (Cobb, Confrey, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003; Penuel & Fishman, 2012; Sandoval & Bell, 2004). Using the evidence described above, I will argue that the researcher’s body can offer an intervention in its own right and that this intervention can disrupt and make visible assumptions about gender and sexuality.

Significance: This presentation aims to build on recent work considering how sexual and gender identities are discussed, reified, and challenged in classroom contexts, as well as to offer new techniques for interrogating the role of gender and sexuality in the classroom. Additionally, the presentation aims to begin a conversation in a much-needed area: the role of the researcher’s body in the formal classroom research context.

Author

• Jacob McWilliams, University of Colorado - Boulder