2020 Early Career Award. Queering the Consent Process: (Un)Masking Participant Identity in Risky LGBTQ+ Teacher Ally Work

• In Event: AERA Division D Invited Session for 2019 and 2020 Awardees

Abstract

Researcher-based efforts to protect participant identity are common in qualitative research. Most Institutional Review Boards expect statements regarding researchers’ plans to protect participants’ privacy, often including assigning participant pseudonyms. These confidentiality practices are ubiquitous in qualitative scholarship, yet relatively unexamined. Drawing on Barad’s (2015) discussions of queer intra-action, this paper explores the implications of a U.S. Southeast-based K-12 educator’s efforts to participate in a research project as an LGBTQ+ teacher ally, when such discussions put her and those she discussed at substantial personal and professional risk. Based primarily on two interviews, during which the participant explicitly examined, and sometimes rejected, the researcher’s efforts at achieving participant confidentiality, this paper centers the participant, her perspectives, and her needs as we explore the importance of an overt and iterative participant confidentiality process in qualitative research.

Stephanie Anne Shelton is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Research in the College of Education and affiliate faculty member in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at The University of Alabama. Her publications have appeared in a range of journals, including GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research Journal, and Teaching and Teacher Education.  

Author

• Stephanie Anne Shelton, The University of Alabama