Chapter 5
A Response to “Queer(ing) Educational Ethnography within and beyond Schools”
In: Bridging the Rainbow GapSearch for other papers by Jen McLaughlin Cahill in
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Abstract
In this chapter response, the author explores the arguments in Slovin and Schey’s chapter, “Queer(ing) Educational Ethnography within and beyond Schools,” to imagine collaborative approaches to research that ensures equitable, humanizing schools for racially diverse queer and trans youth. The author acknowledges her perspective as a practitioner researcher and how Slovin and Schey’s queer(ing) educational ethnographies across contexts relates to the tensions and constraints of her dual role. Notably, because Slovin and Schey assert that ethnographic projects are shaped not just by context, but by social location and how a researcher is read by participants and gatekeepers, the author of this response reflects on the challenges and opportunities of her practitioner study that examined YA literature and media by and about racially diverse LGBTQIA+ people. In conclusion, the author was moved by Slovin and Schey’s chapter to envision approaches to practitioner inquiry that feature the brilliance of youth resistance and agency to advance knowledge about teaching and affirming queer and gender diverse youth at the intersections of multiple identities.