Researching LGBT Youth or Queering Research on Youth?

Abstract

For the first double issue of this journal, we have chosen to focus on researching queer youth. There certainly is no more critical issue that bonds educational practitioners, activists, scholars, and policy makers–as well as youth themselves. Leading this issue is a research article by New Zealand educator and researcher Kathleen Quinlivan. She richly details–through journal excerpts, vignettes, and student/teacher interviews–the educational and political context of her research in two studies of secondary schools. In the process, she discusses how her theoretical and methodology frameworks evolved through school negotiations and lived experiences. Next, from a different paradigmatic framework, Tony D’Augelli and Arnie Grossman describe their major longitudinal study, “The Q & A Project,” of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth (of which this is the first published account). Their article examines the challenges they faced in conducting this research and clearly lays out the limitations of current research such as reliance of convenience samples and overrepresentation of gay youth or those residing in urban areas. By exploring “con-