Scavenging for Data: Queering Educational Research

• In Event: 73.022 - Asking Queer(er) Questions: Using Queer Scholarship to Reshape Qualitative Educational Research

Abstract

[Q]ueer methodology … is a scavenger methodology that uses different methods to collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies of human behavior (Halberstam, 1998, p. 13)

Researchers conducting queer scholarship can have great difficulty in finding and/or getting access to sources. School boards and administrators reject requests for access, diaries and notebooks are destroyed, and newspaper and magazine articles are ripped out of seemingly intact periodicals (Blount, 2005; Graves, 2009). We present two brief examples of forced scavenging when each author attempted to gather data and discuss the broader implications these and other efforts have for analysis, and educational research in general.
Queer Theory as a means of gathering and analyzing data (Eskridge, 1999a, 1999b; Graves, 2009; Harbeck, 1992; Halberstam, 1998; Hutchinson, 1997; Pinar, 1998; Valdez, 1995), and as a tool for rethinking sources when access was cut off or severely curtailed.
We have confronted severe methodological challenges when access was suddenly rescinded, or rejected outright, as well as finding archival material damaged, correspondence/diaries bowdlerized, etc. We have consequently become creative “on the fly,” methodologically scavenging to answer critical questions regarding queer identity and US public schools. Scavenging can lead to searches for any available materials (off-site interviews, snowball samples, queer readings of primary/secondary historical sources, activist flyers, movie tropes, arrest records, disciplinary memos, blog posts, etc.).
Ongoing scavenging for data employs novel approaches to secure the factual information needed to answer seemingly basic questions regarding queer people, their/our lives, and their/our educational experiences. This is consistent with queer research focused on issues of stigmatization, silencing, and liberation (e.g. Blount, 2005; Eskridge, 1999a, 1999b; Graves, 2009; Hutchinson, 1997; Pinar, 1998; Valdez, 1995). Our own lived experiences as queer people give us insights into where data and artifacts might be found. Constantly rethinking access and what “counts” as a source opens us to the critique that we are unsystematic in our methodological approaches, and in turn, undisciplined in our analyses.
Yet, much of the initial research on LGBT people that was/is concerned with queer issues of political and social liberation has been conducted by scholar-activists (Quinn & Meiners, 2009) and, occasionally, outright activists (e.g. Russo, 1981). The social sciences, and Education in particular, have been late to considering queer people as anything but pathological (Author A & Author B, in-press; Quinn & Meiners, 2009). Consequently, while acknowledging this possible “undisciplined” critique, we note that the traditional social sciences, including Education, have been ill-equipped to confront the homophobia lurking at the bottom of their epistemological souls (see Scheurich & Young, 1997; 1998), rendering them under-theorized and methodologically inept.
We acknowledge the varieties of scavenging scholars use to overcome barriers that have limited (and are limiting) access to data sources on queer issues and persons, particularly in schools (see Blount, 2005; Graves, 2009; Halberstam, 1998). Under-explored areas within education that are ripe for methodological risk-taking remain. “Scavenging” presents a promising way of gathering data on historically marginalized populations—like queers—and their/our educational experiences.

Authors

• Catherine A. Lugg, Rutgers University

• Jason P. Murphy, Rutgers University