Queering a Tempered Social Justice Discourse in Educational Research: Alternate Possibilities for Qualitative Inquirers

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

Abstract

Statement of Purpose
This conceptual inquiry articulates a tempered social justice discourse circulating within educational research that normalizes attention to particular aspects of identity (SES, race/ethnicity) while legitimizing layers of silence vis-à-vis others (LGBT). We posit that this tempered discourse pervades the research literature focused on social justice, functioning as a canon. Our purpose is to delineate and exceed boundaries of this tempered social justice discourse via a queer theoretical analysis that offers qualitative inquirers alternate possibilities for constructing theoretical investments and informing research methods (Lugg, 2008).
Theoretical Perspectives & Mode of Inquiry:
This analysis applies queer theoretical investments to the social justice discourse evident within educational research in order to interrupt and expand that discourse. Queer theory posits that binary representations of human experience and identity, such as feminine/masculine, arise from the philosophical priorities of modernity and serve to reinscribe the conditions which make identity politics both possible and intractable. (Thurer, 2005). Further, the metaphor of the closet, itself highly familiar across contemporary Western societies, creates codes of knowing and not knowing that allow a dominant identity to construct and normalize itself (Sedgwick, 1990). Finally, Butler (1990) argues that “identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures, or as the rallying points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression” (p. 121).
Evidence:
Evidence sources used to delineate the contours of canonical social justice discourse in educational research include comprehensive literature reviews (Maxwell, 2006). For example, our review of 72 articles and additional publications focused specifically on educational leadership preparation for social justice found that race/ethnicity received the most frequent attention and social class received the second most frequent attention. Conversely, in nearly all publications related to leadership for social justice, sexual and gender identity are not mentioned and no studies suggested leadership preparation implications for students with disabilities or related to sexual identity (Author, 2014).
Conclusions & Scholarly Significance:
The tendency of social justice scholarship in educational research to emphasize certain identities while virtually excluding others is itself based on codes of knowing and not knowing (Sedgwick, 1990) that inscribe a normalized social justice discourse. Reflective of modernity’s binary arrangements (Thurer, 2005), this category of “social justice” regulates educational research by directing liberatory inquiry towards centered themes (Butler, 1990). Our queer critique suggests that credibility of a justice discourse might be measured in part by its engagement with themes and identities marginal within the justice discourse itself. Further, we assert that social justice is “social” not only in the ends of equitable opportunity and resources across the society, but also in the means of agency through which that equity is achieved. The sociality of this means is a counter work of organizing around shared dissent from marginalization (Butler, 1990) and points qualitative inquirers towards constructing research designs from the margins of their justice and ethical discourses. This turn creates qualitative scholarship that disrupts the foundational cultural logic that discursively produces inequitable structures and practices in schools and society.

Authors

• Michael Patrick O'Malley, Texas State University

• Colleen A. Capper, University of Wisconsin - Madison