Embracing Queer and Trans Frameworks in Qualitative Educational Research: Showing Our Work

by LJ Slovin, Sam Stiegler

Overview

Embracing Queer and Trans Frameworks in Qualitative Educational Research reflects on a decade of conversations about research, thinking, and life, exploring how to navigate the ethical complexities of working with queer and trans youth as queer and trans scholars. The authors introduce the framework of “showing our work,” an intimate approach that revisits the often- invisible processes behind what becomes the ‘final’ product. This lens offers a fresh, rarely told account of how research is made, highlighting the messy, reflective, and transformative moments that shape scholarly inquiry.

By showing their work, the authors invite educational researchers to engage with these moments in their own practice – thinking alongside the discussions and decisions that shape methodological choices. They argue for the vital role of queer and trans methodologies in qualitative educational research, positioning them not just as subjectspecific tools but as critical lines of analytical inquiry. Drawing from their own research with queer and trans youth, both within and beyond educational spaces, the authors revisit and reimagine pivotal moments that challenged, provoked, and ultimately shaped key elements of their published work. Through this process, they create a generative space for methodological reimagining, situating ethnographic work with queer and trans youth as fertile ground for new ways of knowing.

This book is essential reading for students across disciplines, as well as qualitative researchers engaged in youth studies, critical methodologies, sociology, and queer and trans studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032751825
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/11/2025
Pages:	92
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

LJ Slovin is an assistant professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria.

Sam Stiegler is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne.

Table of Contents

An Opening 1. The Cutting Room Floor 2. Desire by Any Other Name 3. Whatcha Gonna Do with All That Data? 4.The Un-How-To Guide

Editorial Reviews

"LJ Slovin and Sam Stiegler offer a rethinking of the research that pushes at the normative expectations of qualitative research and asks researchers crucial questions about the research process. Throughout the book they weave together trans studies, queer studies and education to bridge these often-disparate fields to think with theory about research methodology. Slovin and Stiegler introduce the concept of showing our work as a way to think with theory and to discuss how they each made decisions about what counts as data, which data to include, and how to understand the role of desire in their ethical engagement with participants. They provide an insider’s scoop to the research process and honor the delicate and ethically complicated work of ethnographic research. They bring a careful analysis and thoughtful reflection to thinking about their research process by incorporating conversations they had with each other about how they navigated the challenges and possibilities that presented themselves throughout their research. The curiosity and care brought to these conversations and to the research participants in their study is a welcomed shift in discussions about research. This book is essential reading for graduate students and will be helpful to anyone embarking on a research project."

Dr. Julia Sinclair-Palm, Director of the Robert Quartermain Centre for SOGI‐inclusive Excellence in Education Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia

"Embracing Queer and Trans Frameworks in Qualitative Education Research: Showing Our Work is a treasure to read and study.

It is a timely text that presents the ethical work of critical qualitative inquiry with careful nuance. Slovin and Stiegler’s vulnerable conversations about methodological quandaries offer readers unique insights into the ethical work of queer and trans methodologies in critical qualitative inquiry. These conversations invite both seasoned and novice researchers from all social science disciplines to consider their own sticky and provocative moments in their studies. This book will be studied as an exemplar in research ethics in critical qualitative inquiry as well as queer and trans studies for some time."

Dr. Susan Nordstrom, Associate Professor of Qualitative Research Methodology Counseling, Educational Psychology and Research, University of Memphis

From the Publisher