The methodological im/possibilities of researching sexuality education in schools: working queer conundrums

Abstract

This paper reflects on the im/possibilities and conundrums of researching sexuality education queerly within schooling contexts, and draws on theory to explore the potential of two approaches to analytical ‘messiness’ that may provoke ways of thinking about researching sexuality education and which hold possibilities for more queerly knowing the unexpected. While acknowledging the challenges of researching queerly in schools, it is argued that methodological conundrums that emerge in school-based sexuality education research can push ethnographers' working queerly to develop capacities to think the unthought more fully. Drawing on data from two ethnographic case studies, this paper uses affect theory and the notion of aporias to more fully understand and begin to re-imagine the im/possibilities of researching queerly in schools. It is suggested that in foregrounding analytical conundrums, ethnographers need to cultivate an ongoing uncomfortable reflexivity that can recognise and draw on the generative potential of paradox, uncertainty and ambiguity when researching in schools.